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Climbing Jacob's Ladder: Crisis, Chiliasm, and Transcendence in theThought of Paul Nagel (†1624), a Lutheran Dissident during the Time ofthe Thirty Years' WarLeigh T. I. Penman a

a History Faculty, University of Oxford,

Online publication date: 11 May 2010

To cite this Article Penman, Leigh T. I.(2010) 'Climbing Jacob's Ladder: Crisis, Chiliasm, and Transcendence in theThought of Paul Nagel (†1624), a Lutheran Dissident during the Time of the Thirty Years' War', Intellectual HistoryReview, 20: 2, 201 — 226To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/17496971003783765URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17496971003783765

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Intellectual History Review 20(2) 2010: 201–226

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CLIMBING JACOB’S LADDER: CRISIS, CHILIASM, AND TRANSCENDENCE IN THE THOUGHT OF PAUL NAGEL

(†1624), A LUTHERAN DISSIDENT DURING THE TIME OF THE THIRTY YEARS’ WAR

Leigh T.I. Penman

Taylor and FrancisRIHR_A_478898.sgm10.1080/17496971003783765Intellectual History Review1749-6977 (print)/1749-6985 (online)Original Article2010International Society for Intellectual [email protected] September of 1617, following an exhausting procession across the territory of Saxony, test-ing and enforcing the regulations of the Lutheran administration, a phalanx of grimly cladchurch inspectors wearily trudged into the picturesque town of Torgau.1 Situated on the banksof the Elbe, Torgau was a city famous for its healthful black beer, brewed from the river’s rush-ing waters. However, during the course of their subsequent interrogations, the churchmenquickly became alerted to the presence of a less wholesome influence within the city’s walls.According to their handwritten report, they soon learnt of the activities of a certain MagisterPaul Nagel. Nagel, an astrologer and resident of Torgau for some seven years, had recentlybegun to express ‘strange paradoxes’. The local pastor declared that he had not attendedservices or partaken in the sacraments for some time.2 Information collected from other inhabit-ants rumoured that Nagel read the books of Valentin Weigel and the German mystics zealously.Stranger still, it was said that he made bizarre prophecies, and regarded himself as the ‘thirdElias’.3

The inspectors promptly summoned Nagel to their temporary chambers in the basement of theTorgau Nikolaikirche. When he was confronted with the rumours and accusations concerning hisbehaviour, Nagel was astonished. As one of the learned – and an upstanding member of thecommunity – he simply could not fathom from where these horrible rumours had sprung, and feltthat he had done nothing to deserve them. Naturally he could explain everything. His absencefrom church was due to a troubling and persistent bout of illness, and, although Nagel had heard

The author would like to thank Charles Zika (Melbourne) and Grantley McDonald (Tours) for their comments on thisarticle. The research was completed with the benefit of grants from the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel (wherethe majority of the research was carried out), and from the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst. Additionally, theauthor is indebted to the anonymous referees, whose extensive comments and suggestions improved this work a greatdeal.

1 Wernigerode, Landeshauptarchivs Sachsen-Anhalt, Abteilung Magdeburg, Rep. A 29b, II Nr. 35, fols 578r–v,581v–582v. ‘Visitation der Inspektionen Wittenberg, Torgau […] etc.’ (18 September 1617). A summary ofconclusions from this protocol is located in Dresden, Hauptstaatsarchiv, MS 10088 Oberkonsistorium, Loc. 1987,3, 288.2 Wernigerode, fol. 581v.3 Wernigerode, fol. 581v.

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202 L.T.I. PENMAN

word of them – who indeed among the learned had not during these troubling times? – he hadnever read anything of Weigel’s heretical theology.4 Concerning the mystics, Nagel admitted thathe was, like Luther himself, an avid reader. He urged his interrogators to practice Gelassenheit,and to read the Theologia Deutsch, a work for which, Nagel reminded them, Luther himself hadprovided a useful preface.5

Nonetheless, something seemed amiss to his interrogators. Unconvinced of his claims ofillness, the astrologer was pressed further on his absence from religious services. Could he haveheard anything objectionable preached by the local minister? No, Nagel insisted, he had heardnothing objectionable, although he felt that true Christianity ‘was not wholly dependent on itsoutward rites’. In order to be truly devout, Nagel continued, one had to allow Christ to dwellbodily in the believer.6

With all manner of strange rumours circulating, the worried churchmen were wary of moreextreme types of heresy lurking behind Nagel’s amiable facade. Prompted by some suggestion oranother they had heard, they asked Nagel if he kept familiars, an accusation he denied: ‘I am illu-minated solely by the Holy Spirit,’ he declared, ‘who appears to me invisibly’. For the benefit ofhis inquisitors, Nagel defined ‘antichrist’ as all those who lived against the teachings of Jesus.7

Apparently satisfied with these responses – if not entirely convinced by them – the inspectorscautioned the astrologer to attend church more regularly. They allowed him to go free with a sternwarning, although they reserved the right to refer the case to the head superintendent.8

Yet where there is smoke, there is often fire. A few short months after their visit, Nagelpublished a Prognosticon Astrologo-Cabalisticum for the year 1618 which ‘touched upon severalsecrets and arcana of astronomy’.9 This was a tract that, in the author’s own words ‘was attackedby the ignorant’ as well as the learned, and ‘even seemed to raise the ire of the Devil’.10 Less thana year later, after a mighty comet had burned brilliantly in the night skies above Europe inNovember and December of 1618, Nagel issued the Stellae Prodigiosae (1619), in which hesketched a complex astrological-prophetic system. Based on proofs derived from biblical andastronomical data, Nagel argued that this confluence of ideas demonstrated that the millennium,a time of future felicity for the church, led in spirit by Christ himself, would dawn in 1624;following the great conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in the fiery trigon of Leo, Aries andSagittarius in 1623.11 This ‘millennium’ would endure just 42 years, until the Last Judgement in1666. Inspired by his discoveries, Nagel embarked on an active programme to publicize hischiliastic philosophy in a series of more than thirty books and pamphlets, most of which wereprinted between 1619 and 1627. Outraged theologians and natural philosophers stridentlycondemned his works, and Nagel quickly became one of the most notorious critics of orthodoxLutheranism. All of this, from a man who was raised as a devout Lutheran, and who at one pointwas even a student in Leipzig and Wittenberg, twin bastions of Lutheran orthodoxy in Saxony,homeland of Luther’s Reformation.

Mostly forgotten in our time, Nagel was notorious in his own; reviled by the natural-philosoph-ical and religious establishment as one of the principal agents of chiliastic dissent in the Empire.Following his prophetic emergence in 1617, Nagel’s ideas were attacked by more than a dozen

4 Wernigerode, fol. 582r.5 Wernigerode, fol. 582r.6 Wernigerode, fol. 582r.7 Wernigerode, fol. 582r.8 Wernigerode, fol. 582v.9 P. Nagel, Ander Theil Complementum Astronomiae und ausfürliche Erklerung des fünffjährigen prognostici 1619.(Halle, 1620), sig. C4v.10 No copies of this text appear to have survived. For the appraisal, see P. Nagel, Prognosticon Astrologo-Cabalisticumauff das jahr MDCXX. Beschrieben. ([Halle], 1619), 14. Cf. Leipzig UB Ms 0 356, fol. 97r (20 November 1618).11 See, especially, P. Nagel, Prognosticon Astrologo-Harmonicum Super tres vel plures etiam annos conscriptum.Ausfürliches Prognosticon vber drey oder mehr Jahr beschrieben von 1620 […] . (Halle: n.d. [1620]).


THE THOUGHT OF PAUL NAGEL 203

opponents.12 Due to his prolific literary output, he inspired a diverse, international readership, aswell as a series of imitators. In 1619, a dissident in Töplits, Bohemia, translated one of Nagel’stexts into Czech.13 One Nuremberg astrologer claimed in 1626 to be a ‘discipulus and liebhaber’of Nagel.14 Several of his opponents made reference to supposed ‘Nagelians’ (Nagelisten)lurking within and without the Holy Roman Empire well into the 1630s.15 Yet despite thisnotoriety, Nagel’s celebrity, like that of many other Lutheran ‘New Prophets’, faded rapidly afterhis death; a circumstance almost wholly attributable to the failure of his prophecies for 1624.While in 1680 Friedrich Breckling could still praise Nagel as one of his ‘200 witnesses of[Christian] truth’, by 1700 Gottfried Arnold could only offer that at some point Nagel had beena professor, or tutor, in Leipzig.

Given the rapid oblivion into which Nagel sunk, scholarly interest in his life and work has beenslow to develop. The earliest scholarly engagements with Nagel tended to be somewhat glib. ForRoland Haase, for example, who wrote an often-cited work on the ‘problem’ of chiliasm and theThirty Years’ War, Nagel was little more than a cipher for ‘Rosicrucian’ interests, a typicalreactionary prophet inspired by raging conflicts to express his lamentations.16 For Will-ErichPeuckert, on the other hand, Nagel was a not-particularly interesting astrologer, a minor figurelurking on the fringes of assorted heterodox networks of the early seventeenth century.17 It wasnot until 1988, however, with the publication of Robin Bruce Barnes’s pioneering work Prophecyand Gnosis, that sustained attention was devoted to Nagel, based on a consideration of a largecorpus of printed works. Barnes was the first scholar to demonstrate Nagel’s significance withinthe cultural matrix of seventeenth-century protestant eschatological expectations, refractedlargely through Nagel’s role in the Lutheran debates on chiliastic heresy between 1610 and 1627.Barnes’s careful work demonstrated that Nagel was not an aberration or lone reactionary, but partof a broader movement within Lutheranism critical of the institutionalized faith. Inspired in turnby eschatology, numerology, astrological speculations and popular prophecy, Barnes argued,Nagel and his ilk formed an important counterpoint to prevailing ideas of Lutheran orthodoxy andsocial discipline.18

This idea of Nagel as part of a culture of dissent has been expanded in more recent research.Alistair Hamilton’s investigation of the reception of 2 Esdras in Germany has shown Nagel waspart of an active prophetic textual community.19 Newly rediscovered manuscript evidence takesthese observations further. The indefatigable Carlos Gilly, who since the mid-1980s has been

12 Some of Nagel’s major opponents, who wrote books and pamphlets explicitly dedicated to the refutation of his workinclude Andreas Merck, Georg Rost, Philipp Arnold, Peter Crüger, Justus Groscurdt, Nikolaus Hunnius, Phillip Müller,Lorenz Eichstädt, Abraham Scultetus, Johann Wolther, Valentin Kinlen and Gregor Uberschar. The majority of theseworks were printed between 1620 and 1623 and are considered in L.T.I. Penman, Unanticipated Millenniums. TheLutheran Experience of Chiliastic Thought, 1600–1630 (Dordrecht: Springer, forthcoming).13 P. Nagel, Complementum Astronomiæ, to gest Duwod a Wyswetlenj Petileté Pranostyky Léta 1619. w Hallu wytisstené[…] (Prague, 1620). There is a copy in the British Library. On the translator Michal Longolius, see H. Hallwich, Töplits.Eine deutschböhmische Stadtgeschichte (Berlin, 1886), 300.14 K. Matthäus, ‘Zur Geschichte des Nürnberger Kalenderwesens. Die Entwicklung der in Nürnberg gedruckten Jahres-Kalender in Buchform’, Archiv für Geschichte des Buchwesens, 9 (1969), 965–1396 at 1144, 1167.15 See, for example, the remark of John Dury in his ecumenical ‘Purpose and Platforme of the Journeys’ of 1631(Sheffield, University Library, Hartlib Papers, 18/17/3B), where he announced his intentions in travelling about Europeto engage with ‘the Socinians, Arrians, Anabaptists, Swenkfeldians, Famelists, Weigelians Nagelians, and to purchasethe cheife bookes of all their Tenents, and to obserue the difference of their Churches, Orders, and Customes, seruinge,either for decencie, or discipline’. It seems that Dury here used ‘Nagelians’ as a shorthand for millenarian dissidents ingeneral.16 R. Haase, Das Problem des Chiliasmus und der Dreißigjährige Krieg (Leipzig: Gerhardt, 1933), 97.17 W-E. Peuckert, Die Rosenkreutzer. Zur Geschichte einer Reformtion (Jena: Eugene Diedrichs Verlag, 1928), 28.18 R.B. Barnes, Prophecy and Gnosis. Apocalypticism in the Wake of the Lutheran Reformation (Stanford, CA: StanfordUniversity Press, 1988), 177–81, 212–14, 238–46.19 A. Hamilton, The Apocryphal Apocalypse. The Reception of the Second Book of Esdras (4 Ezra) from the Renaissanceto the Enlightenment, Oxford-Warburg Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 177–8.


204 L.T.I. PENMAN

engaged in research and preparation of an exhaustive bibliography of the Rosicrucian movement,has unearthed several significant manuscript sources relevant to Nagel, the most important ofwhich is undoubtedly the prophet’s correspondence with the Leipzig physician Arnold Kerner.20

This correspondence has revealed Nagel’s involvement in a diverse range of projects, andallowed us to ground the prophet further within both local and broader intellectual circumstances.Indeed, in his capacity as a reader and publicist of dissident ideas, Nagel emerges as somethingof a key figure in early seventeenth-century Lutheranism, and Protestant dissent more broadly.As a member of an ad-hoc network of heterodox correspondents, Nagel knew, read, copied anddistributed several significant dissident works, such as the Rosicrucian manifestos and theunprinted works of Valentin Weigel, several years before their publication. Furthermore, Nagel’scorrespondence reveals the significant role he played in the circle surrounding Jakob Böhme.21

Indeed, Nagel was actually the first person to set any part of Böhme’s work in print, appropriatingsections of Böhme’s Aurora (c.1612), along with unprinted works by Valentin Weigel, in hisProdromus astronomiae apocalypticae (1620).22

Attention has also recently been focused on Nagel for his significance in the history and philos-ophy of science, more particularly in astronomy. An exhaustive bibliographical survey hasrevealed that Nagel was, as the author of an unbroken series of annual astrological Schreib-Calender published between 1610 and the mid 1620s, one of the more prolific and significant ofthe non-academic contributors to a seventeenth-century culture of popular astrological andastronomical inquiry.23 Indeed, in his charmingly titled Chiromantia meganthropi (1611), Nagelwas perhaps the first German-speaking scholar to consider the significance of Galileo Galilei’sobservations of the moons of Jupiter with a telescope, only a few months after the publication ofGalilei’s Siderius nuncius in August 1610.24 It was not enough to erode Nagel’s confidence inthe Tychonic world system.

There presently exist, therefore, several entry points to examining the significance of Nagel’slife and work. In the present article, however, I want to return thematically to Barnes’s originalinvestigation of Nagel as a dissenting Lutheran. More especially, I want to consider the questionsof how and why Nagel came to stray from orthodox Lutheranism and turn to a millenarian visionof a harmonious future. Concentrating in particular on Nagel’s development of the idea of a

20 A selection of Gilly’s important works which mention Nagel include: C. Gilly, Adam Haslmayr. Der erste Verkünderder Manifeste der Rosenkreuzer (Amsterdam: In de Pelikaan, 1994); C. Gilly, Cimelia Rhodostaurotica. Die Rosenkreu-zer im Spiegel der zwischen 1610–1660 enstandenen Handschriften und Drucke, second edition (Amsterdam: BibliothecaPhilosophica Hermetica, 1995); C. Gilly, ‘“Theophrastia Sancta”: Paracelsianism as a Religion, in conflict with the estab-lished Churches’, in Paracelsus. The Man and his Reputation, His Ideas and their Transformation, edited by O.P. Grell(Leiden: Brill, 1998), 151–85; C. Gilly, ‘The “Midnight Lion”, the “Eagle” and the “Antichrist”: Political, Religious andChiliastic Propaganda in the Pamphlets, Illustrated Broadsheets and Ballads of the Thirty Years’ War’, NederlandsArchief voor Kerkgeschiedenis, 80 (2000), 46–77; C. Gilly, ‘Die Rosenkreuzer als europäisches Phänomen im 17.Jahrhundert und die verschlungenen Pfade der Forschung’, in Rosenkreuz als europäisches Phänomen des 17.Jahrhunderts (Amsterdam: De Pelikaan, 2002), 19–56.21 See C. Gilly, ‘Wege der Verbreitung von Jacob Böhmes Schriften in Deutschland und den Niederlanden’, in JacobBöhmes Weg in die Welt. Zur Geschichte der Handschriftensammlung, Übersetzungen und Editionen von AbrahamWillemszoon van Beyerland, edited by Theodor Harmsen and Cis van Heertum (Amsterdam: De Pelikaan, 2007), 71–98(71–4); L.T.I. Penman, ‘A Second Christian Rosencreutz? Jakob Böhme’s Disciple Balthasar Walther (1558–c.1630) andthe Kabbalah. With a Bibliography of Walther’s Printed Works’, in Western Esotericism, edited by T. Ahlbäck (Åbo andTurku: Donner Institute, 2008), 154–72.22 L.T.I. Penman, ‘Repulsive Blasphemies. Paul Nagel’s Appropriation of Unprinted Works of Jakob Böhme and ValentinWeigel in his Prodromus astronomiæ apocalypticæ (1620)’, Daphnis. Zeitschrift für mittlere deutsche Literatur undKultur der frühen Neuzeit (forthcoming).23 K. Matthäus, ‘Zur Geschichte des Nürnberger Kalenderwesens’, 1358, 1143–4; H. Sührig, ‘Die Entwicklung der nied-ersächsischen Kalender im 17. Jahrhundert’, Archiv für Geschichte des Buchwesens, 20 (1979), 329–794 (411–13); K-D.Herbst, Verzeichnis der Schreibkalendar des 17. Jahrhunderts (Jena: Verlag HKD, 2008).24 See K-D. Herbst, ‘Galilei’s Astronomical Discoveries Using the Telescope and Their Evaluation Found in a Writing-calendar from 1611’, Astronomische Nachrichten, 330:6 (2009), 536–9.



‘universal instrument’, which emerged as a central notion in his eschatology, I also want to reflecton the devotional and pietistic implications of this vision. The basis of this article is a detailedbiographical survey, which takes advantage of the recent manuscript discoveries and adds severalmore. By situating Nagel’s intellectual development in its original Lutheran context, we are in abetter position to appreciate the nature and inspirations for his dissent from orthodox Lutheran-ism, and the reasons why it took the forms it did. Additionally, it is possible to link the publicexpression of Nagel’s dissent – through his numerous chiliastic publications, which promisedtheir audience a pious vision of a felicitous future – to intellectual movements and disputes withinLutheranism, such as the so-called crisis of piety (Frömmigkeitskrise) of the early seventeenthcentury.

A consideration of the trajectory of Nagel’s dissent does not only offer insight into a singleearly modern life. It also raises potentially significant qualifications to the confessionalizationthesis, which, until recently, has dominated the historiography of post-Reformation Germany.Proponents of confessionalization have argued that, during the post-Reformation period, Luthe-ranism, Calvinism and Catholicism ‘developed into internally coherent and externally exclusivecommunities distinct in institutions, membership and belief’.25 A liminal figure such as Nageldemonstrates the failure of this sweeping thesis – ‘top-heavy’ in the sense of its privileging of theactivities of states and religions above individuals – adequately to reflect the nuances of earlymodern religious identity, particularly among reputedly heterodox personalities. I argue thatNagel was undeniably a product of Lutheran culture. He was born and raised a Lutheran, andinherited the faith’s apocalyptic leanings. As his many works demonstrate, he identified with theconfession substantially even as his ideas gradually radicalized; Weigel and Böhme, for example,were for Nagel supplements to Lutheranism, not replacements. Tellingly, throughout his entirecorpus, Nagel never repudiated Luther or the faith outright. On the other hand, he was accused ofheresy by some Lutheran theologians, but not by all. Yet, according to the confessionalizationthesis, which pictures orthodox confessions as monolithic entities, Nagel was not, and cannot be,considered a Lutheran in any sense of the term.

This is clearly problematic, for New Prophets, spiritualists, separatists and prophetic Einzel-gänger do not just appear from nowhere. As Ulrich Bubenheimer and Dieter Fauth have shownin several important studies, Nagel’s difficult relationship to Lutheranism is apparently typical ofmany kryptoheterodox personalities that inhabited the Lutheran confessional spectrum.26 As

25 H. Schilling, ‘Confessional Europe’, Handbook of European History 1400–1600, edited by T. A. Brady, H. Obermanand J. D. Tract (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 641. See also, W. Reinhard, ‘Gegenreformation als Modernisierung? Prolegomenazu einer Theorie des konfessionellen Zeitalters’, Archiv für Reformationgeschichte, 68 (1977), 226–52, and the essayscollected in Die Reformierte Konfessionalisierung in Deutschland. Das Problem der ‘Zweiten Reformation’, edited byH. Schilling, Schriften des Vereins für Reformationsgeschichte, 195 (Gütersloh: G. Mohn, 1986). For an overview of theearly literature on confessionalization, see H. Klueting, ‘Die Reformierten in Deutschland des 16. und 17. Jahrhundertsund die Konfessionalisierungsdebatte der deutschen Geschichtswissenschaft seit ca. 1980’, in Profile des reformiertenProtestantismus aus vier Jahrhunderten: Vorträge der Ersten Emder Tagung zur Geschichte des reformierten Protestan-tismus, edited by M. Freudenberg, Emder Beiträge zum reformierten Protestantismus, 1 (Wuppertal: Foedus, 1999), 17–47.26 A selection of articles by Fauth and Bubenheimer include: U. Bubenheimer, ‘Von der Heterodoxie zur Kryptohetero-doxie. Die nachreformatorische Ketzerbekämpfung im Herzogtum Württemberg und ihre Wirkung im Spiegel desProzesses gegen Eberhard Wild’, Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte (Kanonistische Abteilung lxxix),110 (1993), 307–41; U. Bubenheimer, ‘Orthodoxie – Heterodoxie – Kryptoheterodoxie in der nachreformatorischen Zeitam Beispiel des Buchmarkts in Wittenberg, Halle und Tübingen’, in, 700 Jahre Wittenberg: Stadt – Universität –Reformation, edited by S. Oehmig (Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1995), 257–74; U. Bubenheimer, ‘Rezeptionund Produktion nonkonformer Literatur in einem protestantischen Dissidentenkreis des 17. Jahrhunderts’, in ReligiöseDevianz in christlich geprägten Gesellschaften. Vom hohen Mittelalter bis zur Frühaufklärung, edited by D. Fauth andD. Müller (Würzburg: Religion & Kultur, 1999), 106–25; D. Fauth, ‘Die Typus entwicklung des heterodox Gebildetenim Kontext der Hochorthodoxie/ Zur Sozialgeschichte eines Tübinger Kreises um 1620’, Literaten-Kleriker-Gelehrte.Zur Geschichte der gebildeten im vormodernen Europa, edited by R.W. Keck, E. Wiersing and K. Wittstadt, Beiträge zurhistorischen Bildungsforschung, 15 (Cologne: Böhlau, 1996), 245–68.


206 L.T.I. PENMAN

Thomas Kaufmann has recently argued, such personalities, and even the existence of a spectrumof possible seventeenth-century Lutheranisms, has been occluded by the confessionalizationthesis. Indeed, based on a series of case studies from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,Kaufmann has convincingly argued that orthodox Lutheran polemicists themselves did notdismiss the Schwärmer, chiliasts and dissidents they combated during this period as ‘opponentswithout’ the faith, but instead as ‘strangers within’.27 Kaufmann’s conclusions recall the syner-gistic relationship between heresy and orthodoxy outlined in Gottfried Arnold’s long-deridedUnparteiische Kirchen- und Ketzer-Historie (1699–1700).28 A detailed study of Nagel and hischiliastic expectations therefore offers not only a useful mirror in which to reflect upon a singleperson’s intellectual journey, but also the nature of dissident Lutheranism in the early seventeenthcentury, as well as the impact, positive and negative, of modern historiography on how weunderstand and engage with these areas.

PAUL NAGEL: A LIFE

A native of Leipzig, Nagel was born c.1580. Probably unable to afford the perigrinatio academ-ica so beloved by his contemporaries, the gifted student was educated after 1593 at Leipziguniversity, where he most probably studied mathematics, and perhaps theology, probably withthe benefit of scholarships from the Merseburg Stift and city authorities.29 On 24 September1605, he received the title of magister artium in Wittenberg.30 Shortly thereafter, he foundemployment as an astrologer and private tutor in both Leipzig and Wittenberg.31 In addition tohis mathematical proclivities, Nagel was also a practising alchemist. He collected recipes fromthe likes of Edward Kelley,32 and would maintain several significant alchemical contactsthroughout his life, including with the mysterious Polish noble Michael Sendivogius,33 theLeipzig physician Arnold Kerner and Jakob Böhme’s Silesian disciple, sometime head of theElectoral-Saxon laboratories in Dresden, Balthasar Walther.34

27 T. Kaufmann, ‘Nahe Fremde – Aspekte der Wahrnehmung der ‘Schwärmer’ im frühneuzeitlichen Luthertum’ inInterkonfessionalität – Transkonfessionalität – binnenkonfessionelle Pluralität. Neue Forschungen zur Konfessional-isierugsthese, edited by K. von Greyerz, M. Jakubowski-Tiessen, T. Kaufmann and H. Lehmann (Heidelberg: Güterslo-her Verlagshaus, 2003), 181–2; T. Kaufmann, ‘Proches étrangers. Aspects de la perception des “Schwärmer” par lapremière orthodoxie luthérienne’, Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire du Protestantisme Français, 148 (2002), 47–79.28 G. Arnold, Unparteiische Kirchen- und Ketzer-Historie, 2 vols (Leipzig, 1699–1700).29 G. Erler, Die jüngere Matrikel der Universität Leipzig, 1559–1809 als person- und ortregister bearbeitet und durchnachträge aus den Promotionslisten ergänzt, 2 vols (Leipzig: Giesecke & Devrient, 1909), vol. 1, 310: ‘Nagel, Pa[ul]Lips[iensis,] n[on iuravit] 4gr[oschen] i[m] S[ommer] 1593 M 170.’ The designation non iuravit means that Nagel waseither less than thirteen or eighteen years of age at the time of matriculation (Erler is unclear on this point), therefore wasnot required to swear an academic oath. The charge of 4 groschen paid by Nagel was considerably lower than the typicalsum demanded of bürgerliche students, that being 111/2 groschen, suggesting Nagel came from a family of limited means.On later patronage received from the city of Leipzig, see P. Nagel, Catoptromantia physica. Divinatio ex speculoastrologico. Das ist: Gründlicher Bericht und natürliche Weissagung aus der […] umbwaltzung des kugelrundenhimlischen Gewelbes und gestirneten Firmaments, etc. (Leipzig: C. Nerlich, 1610), sig. B4r.30 See Album Academiae Vitebergensis. Jüngere Reihe. Theil 1. 1602–1660, edited by B.Weissenborn, 2 vols (Magdeburg:Historische Verein, 1934) vol. 1, 35.31 On teaching in Wittenberg, see P. Nagel, Astronomiae Nagelianae Fundamentum verum & principia nova: In welchemdurch etzliche Fragen sonderliche Geheimnus proponirt und reserirt warden (n.p., 1622), sig. L2r.32 Karlsruhe, Badische Landesbibliothek [hereafter BLB], MS Allerheiligen 3, p. 225. On Kelley, see M. Wilding, ‘ABiography of Edward Kelley, the English Alchemist and Associate of Dr. John Dee’, in Mystical Metal of Gold. Essayson Alchemy and Renaissance Culture, edited by S.J. Linden (New York: AMS Press, 2007), 35–90.33 See Leipzig Universitätsbibliothek [hereafter UB], MS 0 356 fols 13r, 17r, 19r, etc.34 On Walther, see E. Worbs, ‘Balthasar Walther. Ein Porträt aus dem schlesischen Frühbarock’, Schlesien, 11 (1966),8–13; L.T.I. Penman, ‘A Second Christian Rosencreutz?’; L.T.I. Penman, ‘“Ein Liebhaber des Mysterii, und ein großerVerwandter desselben”: Toward the Life of Balthasar Walther, a Wandering Paracelsian Physician’, Sudhoffs Archiv,94 (2010), forthcoming.



A typical product of his Lutheran background and education, Nagel possessed a deep eschato-logical and prophetic awareness.35 In 1605, while in the tiny Saxon estate (Rittergut) of Dallwitz,he printed his first tract, a belated reaction to the new star of 1604.36 The event was significant,Nagel argued, for the star’s appearance coincided with the grand conjunction of Jupiter andSaturn; an astronomical event that took place around once every twenty years. This constellationof events, in what had until recently been believed to be a static and unchanging heaven, attractedthe attention of many observers. Demonstrating his adoption of the pessimistic eschatologyinherent to the Lutheran world view, Nagel subjected his readership to a catalogue of cominghorrors,37 arguing that the conjunction proved that the Last Judgement was nigh:

Oh, how great shall be the woes [weheflagen] amongst the divines in many places in Germany. Therewill be many false sects, many gruesome errors shall appear, and the learned will be turned against oneanother, which will cause a great tumult and uproar.38

Given the heterodox turn that his life would take later, it is tempting to read this passage as aprediction of the troubles for his native faith that Nagel himself would provoke.

While the Himmels Zeichen was typical of contemporary Lutheran apocalyptic exhortations,the book established an enduring feature of both Nagel’s Weltanschauung and the persistent logicof his eschatology; a logic that would remain constant even as he shifted from a pessimistic to anoptimistic millenarian eschatology. This constant was Nagel’s belief in the systematic influenceof astronomical events and the heavenly bodies themselves upon both the individual and society.Although the significance of the heavenly signs of 1604 was expressed primarily in terms ofreligious conviction in the Himmels Zeichen, the catalyst for these expressions was in factNagel’s observations of the natural world.

This approach was undoubtedly shaped by the literature Nagel collected, read and absorbedduring this period, much of which emphasized the interdependence of the twin books of scriptureand of nature. A 1608 compilation of manuscripts prepared by Nagel and preserved today in Hallereveals that, from 1603, he had been industriously authoring astrological and natural philosoph-ical tracts, as well as collecting and copying extracts from significant magical, natural philosoph-ical, and alchemical works. In addition to excerpts from Cardano on astrological practice – moreespecially on the predictive qualities of spirits and angels – the Halle volume contains significantportions of the pseudo-Paracelsian Archidoxes magica, excerpts from Heinrich CorneliusAgrippa’s De occulta philosophia concerning magical languages, an alchemical-astrological-metallurgical recipe for smithing a sword identical to that carried by Paracelsus, as well asnumerous summaries of anonymous works concerning astrological influences.39

Yet Nagel’s familiarity with these texts did not seem to impact negatively on his essentiallyLutheran world view. In 1609 he arrived in Torgau, shortly after acquiring a five-year stipendfrom the Leipzig City Council, offered in exchange for producing an annual astrological calendarcalculated especially for the city.40 Thereafter, Nagel began to author works of predictiveastrology and medicine influenced by Paracelsian cosmology and cosmogony. In addition to theCatoptromantia Physica (1610), in which he cited Paracelsus regularly,41 another work from thisperiod was his Chiromantia Meganthropi (1611, although written in 1610), a Hermetic treatise

35 On this, see Barnes, Prophecy and Gnosis.36 Dallwitz was the home of the nobleman Hans von Großenhain, from whom Nagel later received financial support.37 P. Nagel, Himmels Zeichen. Grosse Conjunctiones Planetarum superiorum, vnd newer Wunderstern so Anno 1604. den29 Septembris erschienen, etc. (Halle, 1605), sig. C2v.38 Nagel, Himmels Zeichen, sig. C4r.39 Halle, Universitätsbibliothek MS 14 B 31.40 Nagel, Catoptromantia Physica, sig. B4r.41 Nagel, Catoptromantia Physica, multiple references to Paracelsus appear after sig. B2r.


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which explored the idea of astrological influence on the individual through the ‘palmistry’ of theheavenly bodies. Nagel’s interest in the implications of magical and kabbalistic worldviews forastronomy and astrology is further demonstrated in his contemporary correspondence with theSaxon diplomat Nicolaus van Vicken, in which Nagel attempted to sketch the outline of aJudicium astrologophysicum.42 During this period Nagel argued that it was essential for theseeker of wisdom to master the twin books of nature and of scripture, an epistemologicaldichotomy which reflected his dual appreciation of astronomy and theology. Yet while this ideadid not necessarily contradict the Lutheran doctrine of sola scriptura, Nagel’s incorporation ofParacelsian perspectives into an expanding prophetic worldview may nevertheless be viewed asa slight surrender of his strict Lutheran background, and an indication that Nagel himself was ona path to more radical ideas. However, despite his attraction to predictive astrology, Nagel stillsupported the notion of the absolute freedom of God in all matters, thereby escaping charges offatalism, crypto-Calvinism and other heresies from his orthodox counterparts.43

Toward the end of 1611, however, Nagel’s occupation with magical Paracelsian ideas wasfurthered when he established contact with Prince August of Anhalt-Plötzkau. As Carlos Gillyhas documented, August’s small Plötzkau court was a centre for occult, alchemical, Rosicrucianand Weigelian enthusiasm during the opening decades of the seventeenth century.44 Nagel joinedthe court, perhaps only for a short period, as an astrologer, although he would continue tocorrespond and share books with August for several years thereafter, and appears to have visitedthe prince on several occasions.45 In the Plötzkau castle library, Nagel encountered prophetic andheterodox writings that would definitively change his life and his outlook. In 1612 or 1613, morethan a year before its first printing, Nagel there transcribed a copy of the Rosicrucian FamaFraternitatis from a manuscript provided by the Rosicrucian publicist, Adam Haslmayr. Nagel’scopy of the Fama still survives today, bound together with more than a dozen other prophetic,astrological and kabbalistic tracts in a folio preserved in London.46 In addition to several popularprophetic works of the sixteenth century, the volume also contains kabbalistic explications ofRevelation and Daniel, as well as works that, tellingly, are critical not only of the CatholicChurch, but also increasingly so of orthodox Lutheranism.47

Nagel also encountered the works of Valentin Weigel (1533–88) in Plötzkau. Weigel was amould-breaking figure. Like Nagel, he was a Saxon and a student of Wittenberg University. Heeventually became a pastor in Zwickau, and offered no objection to the Formula of Concord whenit was promulgated in 1577. On the surface, Weigel was a typical orthodox Lutheran. However,

42 Copies of two letters to Vicken from Nagel, dated 19 August 1611 and 11 January 1612, together with Vicken’s replies,can be found in Vicken’s Album amicorum preserved today in Stralsund, Kulturhistorisches Museum, Inv.-Nr. A 1993:160, Mag. 27, fols 21r–27r.43 For his explicit rejection of astrological fatalism, see P. Nagel, Catoptromantia physica, sigs A2v–A3r.44 See Gilly, Adam Haslmayr; G. Hoppe, ‘Zwischen Augsburg und Anhalt. Der rosenkreuzerische Briefwechsel desAugsburger Stadtarztes Carl Widemann mit dem Plötzkauer Fürsten August von Anhalt’, Mitteilungen des Vereins fürAnhaltische Landeskunde, 6 (1997), 26–56.45 For an appointment as astrologer, see T. Churton, The Golden Builders: Alchemists, Rosicrucians and the First Free-masons (Lichfield: Signal Press, 1998), 134–5; concerning continued contact and the sharing of books with August, seeNagel’s letter to Kerner, (23 July 1619) in Leipzig, UB MS O 350, fol. 8r and fol. 27v (March 1621).46 London, Wellcome Institute for Medical History Library [hereafter Wellcome], MS 150, fols 129r–139r.47 Most critical of contemporary Lutheranism is the text entitled ‘Der Menschen Zustandt, so künftig ist’, in WellcomeMS 150, fols 42v–51v.



in secret, he wrote and issued a series of decidedly heterodox works, relentlessly critical of thedoctrines of institutionalized Lutheranism.48 As Gilly has documented, Prince August played animportant role in the printing of Weigel’s suppressed theological writings, which began to appearon bookstalls after 1609.49 Nagel’s Explicatio oder Auszwicklung der himmlischen Kräffte(1613) demonstrates that he had generous access to Weigelian works, both genuine and spurious,several years before they appeared in print. Indeed, he implored his readers to:

read studiously and attentively the Gebetbüchlein of that most learned man Valentin Weigel, concern-ing how one may pray in spiritu & veritate. Also [to read] his little tract about the old and newJerusalem, which reports on how the stars and signs of heaven govern us.50

Although Nagel here emphasized the devotional and astrological significance of these books,both Weigel’s Gebetbüchlein and the pseudo-Weigelian Von dem Himmlischen Jerusalemcontained significant chiliastic and mystical elements, to which Nagel was also undoubtedlyexposed.

In any event, Nagel’s initial reaction to Weigel’s corpus was positive. In a portrait first printedon the title page of his Prognosticon Astrologicum for 1614, and recut for a later Prognosticon of1619, Nagel boldly advertised his advocacy of Weigel’s mystical theology of personal salvation(Figure 1).51 A frame to Nagel’s left contained the words γν θι σεαυτóν (know thyself). Thismaxim was the title of one of Weigel’s principal expressions of his radical mysticism, and thephilosophical basis of his repudiation of earthly institutionalized authority.52 To Nagel’s rightwere portrayed a series of concentric circles containing the words sensus, ratio, mens, with thetetrahedron, representing the Holy Trinity, at its centre. This was another formula dear to Weigel.By late 1612 or early 1613, therefore, Nagel was already espousing a philosophy at the very leastinfluenced by Weigelian principles.Figure 1. Paul Nagel, from the title page of his Prognosticon astrologicum (1619). Courtesy of Houghton Library, Harvard University, *GC6 N1317 619pUnfortunately, we have little evidence concerning the course of Nagel’s life and thoughtbetween 1613 and 1617. While this is partly the result of the fact that none of Nagel’s astrologicalpublications from this period are extant, it may also have been due to pressing domestic affairs.53

In October 1613, following a brief courtship, Nagel married Maria Staufenbuhl of Wittenberg ina ceremony in Torgau.54 The marriage may have afforded Nagel expedient connections. Maria’s

48 On Weigel, see A. Weeks, Valentin Weigel (1533–88): German Religious Dissenter, Speculative Theorist, and Advo-cate of Tolerance (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1999). A very interesting article by Horst Pfefferl attempts to argue thatWeigel’s philosophy was not as oppositional to Lutheran interests as his audience (both contemporary and modern) haverepresented. See H. Pfefferl, ‘Das neue Bild Valentin Weigels – Ketzer oder Kirchenmann? Aspekte einer erforderlichenNeubestimmung seiner kirchen- und theologiegeschichtlichen Position’, Herbergen der Christenheit. Jahrbuch für deut-sche Kirchengeschichte, 18 (1993–4), 67–79.49 Gilly, Adam Haslmayr, 127.50 P. Nagel, Explicatio oder Auszwicklung der himmlischen Kräffte/ Aus rechtem Fundament und Grunde der Astrologis-chen Kunst/ ohn alle Superstition, Heucherley und Argwohn oder Aberglauben/ mit fleiß gestellet und gerichtet auff dasJahr […] so uns gibt und zeiget das wort IVDICIVM (Leipzig, 1613), sig. D1r. The works referred to are V. Weigel, Einschön Gebetbüchlein, Welches die Einfeltigen vnterrichtet (Magdeburg, 1617) and the pseudo-Weigelian, Vom Alten undNewen Jerusalem (n.p., 1619), sigs A4v ff.51 P. Nagel, Prognosticon Astrologicum, Von Allerley Zufällen: Aus rechtem wahrem Grunde der Astronomischen Kunstgestellet auff das Jahr nach Christi Jesu unsers Erlösers und Seligmachers Geburt 1614 (Leipzig, 1613), sig. A1r. Theportrait may be viewed online at: http://www.gbv.de/du/services/gLink/vd17/14:695076N_001,800,600. The recut imagewas printed in P. Nagel, Prognosticon astrologicum aus rechtem warhafftigen astronomischen Grunde gestellet vndgerichtet auff das Jahr nach Christi Jesu vnsers lieben Herrn vnd Erlösers seligen Geburt. M.DC.XX. (Leipzig, [1619]).52 V. Weigel, Gnothi Seauton – Nosce te ipsum – Erkenne dich selbst: Zeiget vnd weiset dahin/ daß der Mensch sey einMicrocosmus, das gröste Werck Gottes/ vnter der Himmel (Magdeburg, 1615).53 A compilation of Nagel’s alchemical papers survives (Karlsruhe, BLB MS Allerheiligen 3), however its content betrayslittle of relevance concerning Nagel’s eschatology.54 See E. Wentscher, ‘Auf Spuren der Staufenbuhl und des Wittenberger Buchdrucks’, Familie und Volk , 2:1 (1953),253–7, 284–7.

ω̃


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father, Wolfgang Staufenbuhl (1545–1621), was a bookseller in Wittenberg, and had served as amember of the City Council there since 1580.55 While it does not seem that his spouse’s familyshared any of Nagel’s nascent heterodox proclivities, the Torgau prophet must have been pleasedwith his newly forged connections to one of Saxony’s most upstanding book families, and theinside connection to the trade it afforded him.

It appears, however, that Nagel, for the most part, kept his apparently increasing interest inWeigelian, Paracelsian and other dissident ideas, which he perhaps viewed as crucial innovationsto the Lutheran faith, to himself. In any event, it appears that he was keen to portray himself as a

55 Wentscher, ‘Auf Spuren der Staufenbuhl’, 286.

Figure 1. Paul Nagel, from the title page of his Prognosticon astrologicum (1619). Courtesy of HoughtonLibrary, Harvard University, *GC6 N1317 619p.



confessing, orthodox Lutheran. This is partly reflected in the materials that survive concerninghis life from this time. A manuscript volume of c.1613–14 suggests that Nagel devoted much ofhis time to alchemical pursuits. It evinces little of his millenarian prophetic expectations, if indeedhe had formulated any by this point, or of his interest in Weigelian ideas.56 In 1615, Nagelattempted to win financial favour from the Saxon elector by praising him as a new St George inan elegant poetic pamphlet.57 By 1617, however, when he was called before the Lutheran churchinspectors in Torgau’s Nikolaikirche, it is clear that Nagel exercised a keen interest in heterodoxideas, which he attempted to cover by dissimulation. Nagel’s failure to openly confess his knowl-edge of Weigel’s works and philosophy during this questioning indicate his acute awareness thathe supported an oppositional philosophy; or at least that knowledge of such publications couldendanger his social standing. That strange rumours had spread concerning Nagel calling himselfthe ‘third Elias’ in Torgau further indicate that his reception of Weigelian and Rosicrucian ideashad adopted a distinctly eschatological expression.

Other evidence confirms Nagel’s growing heterodox proclivities in and after 1617. Nagel’scorrespondence with Arnold Kerner in Leipzig reveals that between 1617 and 1618, while he wasstudying Weigel’s works and refusing to attend church, Nagel was also busy establishing contactswith a variety of heterodox groups and personalities inside and outside Saxony. He was, forexample, a good friend of Abraham von Einsiedel, a minor Saxon noble who periodicallyexperienced bizarre visions of a millennial future.58 Nagel was also personally acquainted with,and a lukewarm follower of, the antinomian sect of Esajas Stiefel (c.1560–1627) based in Erfurtand Langensalza. While Stiefel has been examined in depth elsewhere, in a fine work by UlmanWeiß, it suffices here to say that the Thuringian took Weigel’s teachings to their logical extreme;Stiefel claimed that he had successfully internalized Christ’s teachings and, on account of thissuccess, was himself incapable of sin. He therefore declared himself ‘Esajas Christus,’ andbelieved that he and his followers were already living in the prophesied millennial age, becausethey had achieved a state of perfection.59 Nagel also established contact at this time with thecircle around the Lusatian theosopher Jakob Böhme. One of Nagel’s closest friends was theSilesian physician Balthasar Walther, who would stay at Nagel’s Torgau home on severaloccasions.60 Nagel was one of the earliest readers of Böhme’s manuscript work Morgen Röte imAufgang (1612) and incorporated sections of it into his Prodromus astronomiae apocalypticæ of1620.61 Additionally, he prepared handwritten copies of Böhme’s tracts,62 and dedicated severalof his works to Böhme’s noble supporters.63

These activities indicate that, by 1617, when he printed his Prognosticon Astrologo-Cabalisticum, Nagel had cultivated a distinctly heterodox outlook on orthodox Lutheranismand its institutions, and had cleaved to doctrines and personalities that promoted the idea ofa forthcoming period of felicity on earth. Nagel’s search for extra-Lutheran confirmation ofhis ideas would continue in the following years. In 1618, Nagel actively sought out works

56 The majority of the texts in Nagel’s compilation Karlsruhe, BLB MS Allerheiligen 3 appear to have been copiedbetween 1613 and 1614. See A. Schlechter and G. Stamm, Die Handschriften der Badischen Landesbibliothek inKarlsruhe. Band 13. Die kleinen Provenienzen (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2000), 187–94.57 P. Nagel, Triumphus et victoria Georgii herois fortissimi equitis aurati et cataphract […] Heroico Carmine conscripta(Leipzig, 1615).58 On Einsiedel, see D. Colberg, Das Platonisch-hermetische Christenthum, second edition, 2 vols (Leipzig, 1710) vol. 1,264; V. König, Genealogische Adels-Historie oder Geschlechts-Beschreibung, 3 vols (Leipzig, 1727–36), vol. 1, 280–2.59 On Stiefel, see the exhaustive work by U. Weiß, Die Lebenswelten des Esajas Stiefel, oder, Vom Umgang mitDissidenten (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2007).60 See Leipzig, UB MS 0 356, fol. 36r (30 September 1621) and fol. 40r (21 October 1621) describing visits by Walther.61 P. Nagel, Prodromus astronomiae apocalypticae, Welcher vns fürstellet die gewisse warhafftige fundament derWeissagung: Handelt auch Von den beyden Bewegungen des hellgestirnten Firmaments so wol des Kirchen Himmels wassolche seynd. […] Vnd insonderheit wenn sich der Leo Rugiens cap. 10 einstellen werde (Danzig, 1620), sigs C1r–C2v.62 Leipzig, UB MS 0 356, fol. 21r (18 November 1620).63 On this, see Penman, ‘Repulsive Blasphemies’.


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by non-Lutheran authors such as Robert Fludd and the Jesuit Ludovico Carbone (1545–97)to illuminate his millenarian expectations concerning the perfection of society andmankind.64 Yet this quest did not mean that Nagel turned his back entirely on Lutheranism.As the manuscript Löwen Gebrüll (c.1620–1) demonstrates, although Nagel continued to seeLuther as an important prophetic figure, he clearly believed that the Reformer had not gonefar enough in his efforts. Additionally, Nagel believed that Luther’s mission had been for themost part betrayed by the scholasticism of the institutionalized church that bore his name.65

Nagel’s criticism of ‘scholastic Lutheranism’ is a pointer to the lingering influence upon histhought of the so-called Frömmigkeitskrise, or ‘crisis of piety’, that had been developing withinLutheranism since the final years of the sixteenth century.66 The crisis was initiated by thepublication of the works of several authors of Lutheran devotional literature, such as PhillipNicolai, Paul Gerhard and Johann Arndt, all of which were issued between 1596 and 1610. Intheir works, these authors offered a gentle criticism of orthodox Lutheranism by shifting the focusof Pastoral attention away from ‘dry’ doctoral disputation, offering the reader in its place a moreindividual opportunity to experience the Lutheran doctrine of justification, specifically in theirhearts.67 The unexpected popularity of these works established a perceptual divide betweencommunal and individualistic experiences of the faith. Hard-line Lutheran theologians felt thatthe new devotional books (Frömmigkeitsschriften) were mere distractions from the true battle ofdoctrine, and attempted to suppress these works; a reaction manifested most clearly in thepublication delay of Johann Arndt’s Wahres Christenthum after 1605. One theologian, PaulTarnow, went so far as to link the ‘New Evangelists’ who wrote devotional works to the ‘NewProphets’ who spread prophesies of a felicitous future; both were cancers that undermined thefoundations of the faith, and were ‘the reason for the present unhappiness and discord visitedupon us’.68

The unwillingness of strict Lutherans to accept the ‘revolution’ of popular devotional literaturein opening up new and personal experiences of the faith was in turn condemned by enthusiastsand authors of the devotional works. It is perhaps no coincidence that the long-suppressed worksof authors such as Valentin Weigel, with their catch-cry of ‘know thyself’, and a vaguelydevotional style, began to appear in print after 1608, during the wave of interest sparked by thepublication of Arndt’s Wahres Christenthum. Evidently, these mild Weigelian works weremarketed and sold, at least initially, to a Lutheran audience looking for more Frömmigkeits-schriften.

Nagel, it appears, took the inspiration of this new devotional literature rather too far. Heassociated the freedom of personal piety with some of the prophetic literature of the period. Hisreception of both Arndt and Weigel, as well as his belief in his own significance as a prophetic

64 L. Carbone, Interior Homo, Vel De Suiipsius Cognitione (Cologne, 1617–18). Nagel mentioned this book in his 20November 1618 letter to Kerner (Leipzig, UB MS O356, fol. 98v) and again in P. Nagel, Philosophia Novae Astronomiaenostrae particula insignis. Von dem Reich der Natur, wie dasselbe praefigurire abmahle vnd abbilde die beyden Reich:nemlich Christi und der Welt Reich (n.p., 1621), sig. A4v.65 Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, MS Cgm 4416/9, fols 41r, 191r–191v et passim.66 On the notion of the Frömmigkeitskrise, see K. Holl, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Kirchengeschichte, 3 vols (Tübingen:Mohr, 1921–8), ‘Die Bedeutung der grossen Kriege für das religiöse und kirchliche Leben innerhalb des deutschen Prot-estantismus’, vol. 3, 302–84. W. Zeller, Der Protestantismus des 17. Jahrhunderts, Klassiker der Protestantismus, 5(Bremen: Carl Schünemann Verlag, 1962); J. Wallmann, ‘Reflexionen und Bemerkungen zur Frömmigkeitskrise des 17.Jahrhunderts’, in Krisen des 17. Jahrhunderts. Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven, edited by M. Jakubowski-Tiessen(Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1999), 25–42.67 See T. Robisheaux, ‘Penance, Confession, and the Self in Early Modern Lutheranism’, Ideas and Cultural Margins inEarly-Modern Germany. Essays in Honor of H.C. Erik Middelfort, edited by M.E. Plummer and R.B. Barnes (Aldershot:Ashgate, 2009), 117–30 (120). D. Sabean, ‘The Production of Self during the Age of Confessionalism’, Central EuropeanHistory, 29 (1998), 1–18.68 P. Tarnow, Pandora Tarnoviana. Das ist/ Beschreibung des Neuen Evangelij, welches eine Uhrsach ist alles Unglücksin der werthen Christenheit (Quedlinberg, 1663), sig. B4r. The first edition of this work appeared in 1624.



‘third Elias’, show that he connected newfound devotional freedom with chiliastic cognatesforeign to orthodox Lutheranism, taking pride in his revelatory role. Nagel’s ultimate decision topromote such ideas in print, couching them within the matrix of chiliastic expectation, shows thathe saw a more public, and perhaps even pastoral, application for his visions. Combined with agrowing oppositional attitude to institutionalized Lutheranism, Nagel might have even seenhimself, like Arndt and Weigel before him, as something of a devotional author: a writer whowould give spiritual sustenance to himself and to his audience. This pastoral turn is evident in allhis writings which promise imminent relief from the tortures of the age, chief among them hisProdromus astronomiae apocalypticae (1620), Philosophia novae (1621) and the Tabula aurea(1624).69

The impact of the new devotional individualism upon Nagel’s thought might have beenhastened by worsening conditions within the Empire. Nagel, who from the very beginningadhered to a pessimistic-apocalyptic worldview, was sensitive to all possible events of eschato-logical significance. He would no doubt have noted the rumors of imminent war that aroseperiodically in the course of the 1610s.70 Although Nagel lived in the centre of a comparativelystable Saxon state, news of trouble was possibly amplified, rather than dulled, by this circum-stance, especially given the region’s thriving print industry.

In any event, the interests of Lutheran Saxony were, in an environment in which Calvinism wasgaining ground on the Lutheran faith, perceived as increasingly threatened. Mirroring theconfused produced by the Frömmigkeitskrise, at a time when their court preachers insisted that itwas ‘better to be Papist than Calvinist’,71 many Lutheran Saxons must have found themselvesplagued by troubling questions of conscience. Could – or should – a good Lutheran really betraythe Protestant cause by siding with Babylon and the forces of the Antichrist against the Calvinistsfor the worldly political benefit of a single Lutheran state? To many it seemed that the Electoralcourt was privileging fleeting worldly expediency over salvation in eternity. Yet despite thecontroversial diplomatic efforts of Elector Johann Georg I, and the rushed construction of theDresden arsenal, which could reportedly equip an army of 10,000 men with a day’s notice,Saxony was still precariously wedged between feuding states and kingdoms, including rebelliousBohemia and Calvinist Anhalt. Saxony’s lasting position of ‘political papism’ further assured thatallies, protestant or otherwise, would be hard-won should the situation in the Empire worsen.72

Nagel himself keenly followed Saxony’s political fortunes. As mentioned previously, in 1615he had praised Saxony’s Elector in an artful poem celebrating the ruler’s political mastery. Butwhile this pamphlet bespoke Nagel’s awareness of the macro-political situation in the Empire –and also of the need to provide financially for a growing young family – evidence of a comingdramatic change could also be felt more locally, indeed in Torgau itself. In 1617, at precisely thetime in which Nagel’s investment in heterodox millenarian ideas reached the printed page, aseries of premature deaths threw the local church into disorder. Before September 1617 threeprominent churchmen, including the long-serving superintendent Tobias Beuther, died.73

Beuther’s position was not filled again until early 1618. In such a state, the spiritual authoritieswere poorly positioned to deal with the needs of their congregation, especially as plague had

69 P. Nagel, Prodromus astronomiae apocalypticae; Nagel, Philosophia Novae Astronomiae; P. Nagel, Tabula Aurea M.Pauli Nagelii Lips. Mathematici, Darinnen Er den Andern Theil seiner Philosophiae Novae proponiren vnd fürstellenthut (n.p., 1624).70 On these rumours, see G. Parker, The Thirty Years’ War, second edition (London: Military Heritage Press, 1987), 12.71 See J.G. Walch, Historische und Theologische Einleitung in die Religions-Streitigkeiten, welche sonderlich ausserhalbder Evangelisch-Lutherishen Kirche entstanden, 5 vols (Jena, 1735), vol. 3, 488–527.72 Concerning the Saxon politics of this period, see A. Gotthard, ‘“Politice seint wir bäptisch”: Kursachsen und der deut-sche Protestantismus im frühen 17. Jahrhundert’, Zeitschrift für historische Forschung, 20 (1993), 275–319; F. Müller,Kursachsen und der böhmische Aufstand 1618–1622 (Münster: Aschendorff Verlag, 1997).73 See Wernigerode MS, fols 574r–v.


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threatened the city at regular intervals during the previous decade, adding to growing inclinationstoward existential doubt. To someone who viewed himself as a prophet chosen by God, it musthave seemed like an ideal time to speak out. The appearance of a foreboding comet in the nightsky at the end of 1618 only encouraged Nagel’s public expression of his convictions.74

Adding to difficulties of domestic and international conscience were Nagel’s personal circum-stances. In his letters to Kerner, Nagel made frequent reference to a reoccurring – and perhapslife threatening – illness that left him myopic, with ‘great pains in his hands, arms and legs’.75 Onoccasion, the pain left him bedridden for days at a time, leaving him unable even to hold a pen.Such bouts of illness would only have added to his apparently precarious financial circumstances.Although Nagel’s prophetic tracts often featured dedications to lofty patrons, and earned therebya small fee, Nagel’s greatest source of income was that provided by the occasional provision ofastrological nativities, tutoring sons of local nobility, and the small revenue earned from the saleof his annual astrological calendars and other works.76 Concerning this period, Nagel stated thathe was very often a ‘patient’; hardly the ideal conditions in which to provide for a wife andchild.77

Nagel’s social life in Torgau would not have been helped by the unfavourable rumours thatcirculated about him, which must have undermined his standing in the community and consider-ably disrupted his social network. During the 1617 visitation, he complained that ‘the people hereaccuse me of so many things that I can scarcely believe it when I hear about them’.78 As thequestions of his inquisitors demonstrate, these rumours not only encompassed ‘paradoxical’religious beliefs, but even extended to suspicions of Nagel keeping familiars.79 Nagel’s lettersfrom this period offer a similarly bleak picture of ongoing ostracism, and are peppered with refer-ences to various hardships. In 1619, he remarked that he battled not only against his illnesses, butalso against his ‘many enemies’ within and without Torgau.80 That same year, both the spiritualand secular authorities whom Nagel rejected joined forces against him. In the early months of thatyear, Nagel was summoned to the twin centres of secular and spiritual power in Saxony –Dresden and Wittenberg – and forced to account for his heretical ideas before a church tribunal.81

The constant pressure from church authorities not only provoked spiritual and personal angst:heavy financial punishments were also meted out, which Nagel found impossible to pay. Thefinancial situation was heightened by pressures similarly beyond Nagel’s control. In September

74 P. Nagel, Stellae prodigiosae seu Cometae per oculum triplicem observation & explication: Das ist: Des newenCometen und Wunder Sterns im October, November und December 1618 erschienen, warhafftige Deutung und Außle-gung per Magiam insignem (Halle, 1619).75 Some examples from Nagel’s correspondence include Leipzig UB MS 0 356, fol. 7r (24 July 1619) and fol. 52r (29April 1622).76 Leipzig, UB MS 0 356 fols 8r, 10v, 19v, 74v and 76r refer to Nagel’s provision of nativities, the final reference beingto a set of three ordered by the alchemist Sendivogius for the princely sum of 100 Reichsthalers. On fol. 38v, Nagel makesreference to teaching ‘Geometria’ at the home of von Einsiedel. There is an opportunity here to correct an entrenched andoften repeated error: several secondary sources incorrectly assert that Nagel was rector of the Latin school in Torgau.However, Nagel’s name does not appear among those of teachers or staff named in the Wittenberg visitations of 1617 or1624 (Wernigerode MS, fols 578r–v, 581v–582v), nor is his name included in any contemporary records of the TorgauGymnasium. See, further, J.C.A. Bürger, Friedrich Joseph Grulicks Denkwürdigkeiten der altsächsischen kurfürstlichenResidenz Torgau aus der Zeit der Reformation, 2nd edn (Torgau, 1855), 183–4.77 P. Nagel, Astronomiae Nagelianae Fundamentum verum, sig. A4v; for mention of his family see Leipzig, UB MS 0356, fol. 14v.78 Wernigerode MS, fol. 582v.79 Wernigerode MS, fol. 582v.80 Wernigerode MS, fol. 7r (24 July 1619).81 Wernigerode MS, fol. 7r. See also, W. Friedensburg, Urkundenbuch der Universität Wittenberg, 2 vols (Magdeburg:Selbstverlag für die Provinz Sachsen und für Anhalt, 1927), vol. 2, 37, which reproduces an electoral order of 11 February1619 that forbade the trade of several of Nagel’s tracts in the Saxon book market, along with the works of Weigel.



1621, Nagel complained to Kerner that the entire town was suffering under ‘inflation that everworsens’.82

Gradually, as Nagel refused to heed the warnings of his interlocutors, friends and neighbours,and continued to issue chiliastic pamphlets, the noose tightened. In early September 1622, Nagelvoiced a fear that his mail was being intercepted, stolen, and read by parties conspiring againsthim.83 He may have been right. Scarcely ten days later, following an inquisitorial procedureagainst him conducted by local authorities, Nagel had to endure the humiliation of a public hear-ing and penance. Worst of all, his wife Maria, perhaps finally tired of the troubles of conscienceand social pressures provoked by her husband’s activities, had betrayed his true beliefs to theinquisitors.84 According to his own account, Nagel was effectively alone, mired in depressionand under ‘attack from friend and foe alike’.85

Despite this, Nagel never gave up hope that his millenarian predictions for 1623 to 1625 wouldultimately prove correct. The signs appeared not only in the macrocosmic heavens, but also in themicrocosm of Torgau as well. In 1623, as the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in the fiery trigonburned overhead, Dr Zapf, chief pastor and superintendent at the Torgau Marienkirche, wasstruck dead by a heart attack in the middle of one of his sermons, toppling from the pulpit to thestone floor of the church.86 It was Zapf who, only a few months earlier, had initiated a secondinquisitorial procedure against Nagel. We can only imagine the joy, and perhaps simultaneouslythe fear, that Nagel felt upon reception of the news of Zapf’s passing – for he was no doubt absentfrom the church when the incident occurred – which must have seemed to confirm, through themechanism of divine justice, the rectitude of his expectations. He celebrated the imminent changein the fortunes of humanity in his Trigonus Igneus (1623), a jubilant pamphlet printed under theglorious pseudonym ‘Paul Sonnenschein’.87

It was, however, all for naught. In 1624, the heavenly kingdom that Nagel had awaited andpredicted with such confidence never dawned. As one of the few New Prophets of the time whoactually had the courage to deal with the fact of his disappointed prophecy, in a work written laterin the year Nagel remained steadfast in his convictions, insisting that all of his predictions wouldsee fruition by 1630, at the very latest.88 Still, given his notoriety, Nagel’s career would endignominiously. He died, perhaps suddenly, perhaps as the cumulative result of his many illnesses,at the end of November 1624.

Two contemporary chronicles recorded that, having refused to renounce his errors before hisdeath, Nagel was subsequently interred without ceremony (ohne Sang und Klang) in unconse-crated ground in Torgau on 1 December.89 In a sermon held directly after the burial, the local

82 Leipzig, UB MS 0 356, fol. 37r. (21 September 1621).83 Leipzig, UB MS 0 356, fol. 62r (12 September 1622).84 Leipzig, UB MS 0 356, fols 64r–v (22 September 1622), in which Nagel describes the hearing to Kerner.85 Leipzig, UB MS 0 356, fol. 64v.86 Bürger, Denkwürdigkeiten, 130.87 P. Nagel [Paul Sonnenschein], Trigonus Igneus, Was derselbe mit sich bracht in vergangenen Zeiten. Und was auchsolcher fewriger Triangul, neben der grossen Conjunction […] bringen werdt (n.p., 1623). Although stylistically the tractclearly stems from Nagel’s pen (despite the dissimulatory claim that the author is in fact a ‘student of Nagel’), Nagelconfirms his authorship of the tract in Leipzig, UB MS 0 356, fol. 76r (4 November 1623).88 P. Nagel, Prognosticon Astrologicon Auffs Jahr 1625 (Halle, [1624]), sigs C2r–v.89 See Bürger, Denkwürdigkeiten, 183. Throughout this valuable work, Bürger cites several contemporary manuscriptchronicles once in the collection of the Schulbibliothek of the Städtischen Gymnasium in Torgau. According to the editorsof a recent volume of the Handbuch der historischen Buchbestände in Deutschland, this collection was dispersed in 1965,its materials divided between the Sächsische Landesbibliothek in Dresden and the GDR’s so-called Zentralantiquariat inLeipzig. See Handbuch der historischen Buchbestände in Deutschland, 27 vols, edited by F. Krause with W. Guth andD. Debes (Hildesheim: Olms, 1997), vol. 17, 38. Unfortunately, no manuscripts of the Schulbibliothek, let alone theappropriate chronicles themselves, are to be found in the collections of the present Sächsische Landes- und Universitäts-bibliothek in Dresden.


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superintendent railed against Nagel’s heresies at length to a horrified public.90 In death, theLutheran church, for so long the object of Nagel’s scorn, was finally able to reassert its authorityover him. If he was divisive in life, Nagel remained equally so in death. Other tales, now impos-sible to substantiate, circulated concerning his burial. In 1740 Zedler recorded that, after officialsin Torgau refused to bury Nagel’s body, several townswomen took pity on the astrologer’s fateand interred him outside the city walls. Their efforts subsequently discovered, the women weresentenced to languish for a month in prison. As for Nagel, his body was disinterred and left to rotin the fields.91 Another version tells that the townswomen themselves disinterred Nagel, althoughfor what reason I cannot say, after he had been buried for eight days.92 The confusion surroundingNagel’s burial reflects his polarizing effect on the opinions of the contemporary public; thedisregard shown his corpse was a very real reminder to the other citizens of Torgau about thedangers of flirting with heresy.

Nagel’s legacy, however, lived on. A series of astrological Schreibkalender were issued in hisname in Nuremberg between 1625 and 1630.93 Similar publications were issued in Halle as lateas 1627.94 In 1628, Nagel’s opponent Petrus Crüger dismissed the chiliastic ruminations of theNagelianer and Nagelisten that continued to appear throughout the Empire. The world remainedin chaos, not paradise, precisely as Nagel had left it. But with his demise, Nagel did indeedperhaps reach that land of freedom from troubles and doubt that he had awaited all along: the year1624 delivered a new Golden Age of everlasting peace, albeit a very personal one, precisely ashe had predicted.

CRISIS AND TRANSCENDENCE

In works on historical instances of millenarianism influenced by sociological theory, crisis hasoften been identified as a factor explaining the basic appeal of millenarian visions to a mass audi-ence. The early studies of Cohn, Hobsbawm, Thrupp, Lanternari and others emphasized thatmillenarian ideas tended to find a resonance among the downtrodden, the dispossessed and thepoor, precisely in those times when their societies were threatened by chaos and disaster.95 Whilemore recently scholars have demonstrated that eschatological and millenarian ideas can also

90 See Bürger, Denkwürdigkeiten, 183. The November 1624 date is accurate, or at the least fits the sparse availableevidence: the final letter from Nagel to Arnold in (Leipzig, UB MS 0 356, 78r–9r) is dated 14 March 1624. The passagein Nagel, Prognosticon Auffs Jahr 1625, sig. C2v, demonstrates that this work was written in late 1624. The first printededition of Nagel’s Raptum Astronomicum (issued in 1625, discussed in the text below) is described in the subtitle as a‘hinderlassene Entdeckung und beschreibung’; where ‘hinterlassen’ evidently indicated that the text was ‘left behind’ or‘bequeathed’ by Nagel. Alternatively, J.H. Zedler, Grosses vollständiges Universal-Lexicon aller Wissenschafften undKünste, 64 vols (Leipzig, 1732–54), vol. 23, 233 gives 1625 as the date of death, while most other sources, incongruously,repeat the date 1621.91 The story was first printed in Zedler, Universal-Lexicon, vol. 23, 233 and has been repeated by the likes of Jöcher andin the article on Nagel by G. Frank, Allgemeine deutsche Biographie, 56 vols (Leipzig, 1875–1910), vol. 23, 215–16.92 See Bürger, Denkwürdigkeiten, 183.93 K. Matthäus, ‘Zur Geschichte des Nürnberger Kalenderwesens’, 1358. All calendars were issued by the Endter firm inNuremberg, and were formerly in the collection of J.A. Endter, which has now disappeared. After observing the list ofcalendars collected by Endter, Matthäus remarked that that only on the final edition of 1630 appeared the indication thatNagel was ‘deceased’.94 [Pseudo-] P. Nagel, Alter vnd neuer Schreib Calender (Halle, 1627). A copy is in Hildesheim, Stadtbibliothek, VII A82, 3. Band. Salfeldt was not Nagel’s regular printer in Halle, and the text itself contains few hallmarks of Nagel’sauthorship.95 E. Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels. Studies in Archaic Forms of Social Movement in the Nineteenth and TwentiethCenturies (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1959); N. Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium. RevolutionaryMillenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages, third edition (London: Pimlico, 1993); Millennial Dreams inAction. Essays in Comparative Study, edited by S. Thrupp (The Hague: Mouton, 1962); V. Lanternari, The Religions ofthe Oppressed. A Study of Modern Messianic Cults, translated by L. Sergio (London: Gibbon & Kee, 1963).



support essentially conservative positions, there remains little doubt that crisis, or rather aperceived sense of crisis, plays an important role in encouraging the expression of, or evenfostering chiliastic expressions.96

Nagel’s biography provides a case in point for recognizing the nuanced impact of crisis onchiliastic expression. Indeed, Nagel is a particularly interesting figure, for much of the ground-work of his later millenarian expectations was laid in Plötzkau and elsewhere in 1611 and 1612,well before the more general crises of war, inflation and famine that struck the Holy RomanEmpire after 1618, and seemingly even before the series of personal crises – of health, socialstability – began to play such a disruptive role in Nagel’s domestic life. However, if crisis playedonly a limited role in encouraging Nagel’s early interest in dissident doctrines, I contend that itplayed a substantial role both in influencing Nagel’s decision to publicize openly these ideas inprint, and indeed the very shape and form of their expression.

The nature and characteristics of Nagel’s elaborate prophetic and millenarian system itselfcomprised a reasoned reflection of, and response to, the crises around him. If crisis means chaos,disorder and uncertainty, then Nagel wanted to find and identify the antitheses of these condi-tions. In each of his printed works, beginning with the Prognosticon Astrologo-Cabalisticum of1617, the chief recurring element in Nagel’s prophetic work was a desire to posit order; to identifyand apply axiomatic and infallible rules that demonstrated beyond all reasonable doubt that aperiod of felicity and spiritual enlightenment would commence shortly after 1623. While a desirefor astrological certainty was also a feature of traditional Lutheran apocalypticism, the quest toimpose order upon chaos in Nagel’s works drew upon two separate experiential realms.97 First,the exterior – prophetic patterns Nagel identified in the external world, such as the twin books ofnature and scripture, parts both of the prophetic continuum established in Daniel, Revelation and2 Esdras – and second, the interior: a personal, deep-seated dissatisfaction with the current stateof the world, with Lutheran orthodoxy, that reflected Weigelian spirituality and the new emphasison the individual within the Frömmigkeitsschriften.

These two elements – the exterior and the interior – were combined in Nagel’s encapsulationof the benefits of the doctrines of the School of the Holy Spirit, or as he also named it, ‘the Schoolof Daniel and the Magi’. Drawing on the works of Lutheran dissident Julius Sperber and others,Nagel saw this School, which he believed had existed, invisibly, since the time of Christ, as theultimate answer to the deficient state of the world. ‘It is the office (Amt) of the Holy Spirit [work-ing within his intangible school] to provide us with comfort, to remind us of what Christ said, tolead us in truthfulness, and to tell us what the future awaits’, declared Nagel.98 Implicit in thisstatement was a tremendous lack of confidence in all branches of worldly authority, particularlyspiritual authority. It combined the exterior prophetic background of the eschatological dramaitself with more personal devotional ideas of ‘comfort’ and ‘truthfulness’. Nagel’s millennialkingdom, the ‘regal summer’ in which ‘all devout Christians will be redeemed’ was, like that ofWeigel, one to be understood spiritually.99 It would last only a short time comprising ‘a GoldenAge, a true golden time […] a time of temperance, in which the golden freedom, love, fidelity,

96 For a recent study emphasizing the conservative role of eschatology, see J.K. Jue, Heaven Upon Earth. Joseph Mede(1586–1638) and the Legacy of Millenarianism (Dordrecht: Springer, 2006); for an excellent collection on the impact ofcrisis, see Krisen des 17. Jahrhunderts. Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven, edited by Jakubowski-Thiessen et al.97 As Barnes notes, this ‘distinctive Lutheran attitude toward astrology arose from the need to retain prophetic certaintyin a time when the whole evangelical heritage seemed increasingly threatened. Luther’s heirs sought comfort in the ideathat every event, no matter how upsetting, was necessary for the completion of the divine plan.’ Barnes, Prophecy andGnosis, 154–5.98 From P. Nagel, ‘Prognosticon for 1621’, cited in G. Arnold, Unparteyischen Kirchen- und Ketzer-Historie […] I–IV(Frankfurt, 1729), vol. 3, 53.99 P. Nagel, Prognosticon astrologicum aus rechtem warhafftigen astronomischen Grunde gestellet vnd gerichtet auff dasJahr nach Christi Jesu vnsers lieben Herrn vnd Erlösers seligen Geburt. M.DC.XX. (Leipzig, [1619]), sig. B2v; Cf.Nagel, Tabula Aurea, sig. C4v.


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justice, understanding, wisdom, truth, modesty, holiness and fear of the Lord will exist’.100 Inshort, it was the opposite of the world that Nagel confronted every day.

While the teleology of Nagel’s vision revolved around a spiritual comfort before the LastJudgment, the logic that underwrote his convictions was the synthesis of biblical prophecy withastronomical events. Nagel’s idea of the Heavenly School impacted the logic of his astrologicalexpectations, for the signs of the times could only be interpreted by those personally illuminatedby God. At the same time, having been instructed by the Holy Spirit, recipients of thisillumination had a duty to share the wisdom granted them with others. Nagel, somewhat prone toverse-form declarations, encapsulated his beliefs in the following manner:

For only Christ the Lord,In his heart pure, knows future things,that are prophesied by his servantsto his holy believers.In comparison with His wisdom,all human arts are valueless.Whosoever does not always take carethat the spirit of God lives in him,he can truly produce nothing of valueconcerning future things.Without timidity I proclaimmere lies and swindles [betrügerey] shall be his art.Therefore, if you want to prophesyand not seduce the people [away from true belief]Hear now the Lord in his Spiritual SchoolThat has its place and seat within you101

For Nagel, the teachings of ‘heathen’ astronomers and orthodox theologians offered a meresketch or framework (Stuckwerk) of true religiosity, upon which such scholars hung their gaudytrappings of decidedly worldly knowledge. In comparison with men like Julius Sperber and otherprophets blessed with true insight by the Holy Spirit, their theology encapsulated ‘nothing morethan naked letters’, it was ‘mere theory, and not practice’.102 Nagel compared the Lutheran scho-lastics, with their endless disputations and academic digressions, with the fractious scorpions ofRevelation 9:3: they were those who unjustly held power over the earth. The entire edifice of theirknowledge was directed not toward revealing the truth about the coming times and preparing thefaithful for them, but instead for the glorification of their own names. It was only in the Schoolof the Holy Spirit that ‘all the mysteries and the magnalia of God may be learned’.103 By passingon to an audience through his printed works the secrets revealed to him by the Holy Spirit, Nagelwanted to offer readers in the general public a supplicatory vision of existence that bypassed thecorruptions of worldly authority. Collectively, his corpus might therefore be viewed as somethingof an ersatz series of chiliastic Lutheran Frömmigkeitsschriften.

Nagel was gambling much to speak out in this manner. The majority of his works after 1617predicted that the great conjunction of 1623 would initiate a spiritual Golden Age in the hearts ofall true Christians. Nagel was, of course, well aware that the expectation of a future millennium,a time of feasting and joy for the saved, was a heresy according to Lutheran doctrine. In one textof 1622, Nagel denied vehemently that he was a ‘Chileast [sic]’, and therefore a heretic, for he

100 Nagel, Prognosticon Auffs Jahr 1625, sig. B3r.101 As cited in Arnold, Kirchen und Ketzer-Historie, vol. 3, 54.102 Nagel, Prognosticon cabalisticum, 28.103 Nagel, Tabula Aurea, sig. A4v.



did not claim that the forthcoming Golden Age would be a worldly one.104 Unfortunately, Nagelappears to have been ignorant of the category of chiliasmus subtilis, introduced into Lutheranheresiography in 1615, which specifically forbade spiritual as well as worldly visions of a felic-itous future.105 In any event, Nagel claimed that recognition of the true doctrine was essentiallya matter for the individual, one of personal spiritual purity. The events of Revelation 20, Nagelargued, clearly took place in the future, for not all prophecies concerning the Last Days had cometo pass. Any other opinion was a lie.106 With a pure heart, a reader of his works could see ‘thatChrist will possess a special kingdom or order upon earth’.107 Those who believed that this wasa heresy, he claimed, ignored the words of the Bible, and spoke ‘against the most manifesttestimony of holy scripture’ (contra manifestissima sacræ scripturæ testimonia).108 Such personsdisplayed, with their claims that nothing more than the Judgement Day awaited humanity, a‘monstrous vanity’.109

Possessing a university education, Nagel bolstered his arguments as much as possible with theweight of prior authority. In addition to scripture, Nagel’s millennial vision was informed byseveral other traditions. Nagel linked the biblical millennium with broader hopes of a comingthird or Golden Age, a medieval Joachite idea which he in turn inherited from prophetic authorsof the late sixteenth century: among them Julius Sperber, Eustachius Poyssel, Guillaume Postel,and even the Lutheran theologian and author of devotional literature, Philip Nicolai.110

His sources were naturally not only religious. Astrology also played a chief role. As Genesistold, the firmament was created by God at the world’s beginning, and as this ephemeral worldculminated in a Golden Age, the secrets of the heavens would once again be revealed; for ‘it wasin the starry heavens that God represented the Kingdom of Christ, the kingdom of the Son of Godupon earth’.111 To Nagel the firmament itself was therefore a book of mysteries, from which onecould read the secret of a salvation that depended not only on the second coming of Christ, butalso on the reception of heavenly knowledge from the angelic world. With reference to Agrippa,Nagel declared that in the Book of the Heavens one could ‘read the Scriptura Malachim,112 thetrue writing of the Angels’, which, however, ‘no man can understand until he lives angelically,and follows in the footsteps of Christ the Lord of Lords’.113

The objective of Nagel’s enquiries was to bring the knowledge of the upper waters (heavenlyspheres) together with the lower waters (corrupt reality) ‘in harmony and consensus’.114 Thisconsensus was expressed in all his works as a unification of the stars and the Bible. For Nagel,the two existed in a decidedly exegetical harmony: ‘for [the book of] Revelation is our trueastronomy, and our astronomy is the true Revelation’.115 To the initiates, students and membersof the inchoate School of the Holy Spirit, the truth of this knowledge would crystallize followingthe great conjunction of 1623, in the subsequent dawning of the Kingdom of Christ in their hearts.Although Nagel’s vision was therefore primarily spiritual, the coming of the Kingdom of Christwould not only have an impact on the interior life of true Christians. Through the influence of

104 P. Nagel, Alter vnd neuer Schreib Calender (Halle, 1622), cit. Sührig, ‘Entwicklung der nidersächsischen Kalender’,466.105 See J. Wallmann, ‘Zwischen Reformation und Pietismus. Reich Gottes und Chiliasmus in der lutherischen Ortho-doxie’, Verifikationen. Festschrift für Gerhard Ebeling (Tübingen: Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1982), 187–205.106 Leipzig, UB MS 0 356, fol. 97v (20 November 1618).107 Nagel, Prognosticon Cabalisticum auff das jahr MDCXX, 27.108 Cit. Arnold, Kirchen- und Ketzer-Historie, vol. 3, 54.109 Leipzig, UB MS 0 356, fol. 98v (20 November 1618).110 On this see Penman, Unanticipated Millenniums, ch. 1.111 Nagel, Tabula Aurea, sig. C3r.112 Popularized by Agrippa. Nagel copied the alphabet out into a volume of his manuscripts. See Halle, UB, MS M 14B31, fol. 13r.113 Nagel, Tabula Aurea, sig. C4r.114 Nagel, Tabula Aurea, sig. D1r.115 Nagel, Tabula Aurea, sig. D1v.


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their newly enlightened actions, it would also have an impact on the exterior life. The millenniumwould flourish for 42 years, until the dawn of the Last Judgement in 1666.

THE UNIVERSAL INSTRUMENT: ITS FUNCTION IN CHAOS AND TRANSCENDENCE

Nagel’s exegetical vision of a harmonious future manifested itself in several ways. His many chil-iastic works – particularly those printed from late 1618 forwards – are all, in essence, sequels toone another. Outside of his theosophical masterpiece, the Tabula aurea (1624), rarely did hisbooks present anything radically different from those they followed; an utterly bewildering selec-tion of geometrical, kabbalistic and mathematical figures, culled from choice passages from theBible, the natural world or, indeed, out Nagel’s own head. As the crucial dates of 1623 and 1624approached, Nagel’s works provided ever more frantic, diverse, impenetrable and complexproofs that the millennium would soon dawn.116 Already in 1622, Nagel could write with somejustification that he had ‘tested these matters [concerning the millennium] so diversely in mywritings, that I can scarcely believe that there are some who remain blind, and cannot acknowl-edge nor see the certainty and truth of my prophecies’.117 Indeed, Nagel’s intricate chronologicalinvestigations were admired by many observers, including the author of the influential WahresChristenthum, Johann Arndt.118 By tethering the mysteries of the Holy Spirit to a series ofcomplex numerical equations, Nagel reduced, in a conceptual sense, the mysteries of theGodhead to a sort of axiomatic spiritual mathematics. This suited his quest for order. Salvationcould be assured through Nagel’s kabbalistic theology because his system was as precise asclockwork, which literally counted down to the millennium. The prophet was particularly pleasedwith the numerous ‘correspondences’ he discovered between the Bible, the heavens and in non-biblical traditions, because all these interlocking systems of thought, when reduced to a spiritualmathematics and added, subtracted, multiplied or divided together, ‘proved’ the rectitude of hissystem. However, there was one number, or rather one mystical numerical object, that Nagelprized above all others: a mystical number that would provide the answer to the riddle of life, theuniverse and everything. Nagel variously called this number or ‘instrument’ – as he preferred todescribe it in reference to its metaphysical utility – the ‘kingly instrument’ (königliches Instru-ment). It may be seen as the ultimate manifestation of the axiomatic trend in Nagel’s thought, andtherefore the clearest manifestation of his desire to discover and impose order, purpose andsupplication in the phenomenal world.

116 One of Nagel’s favourite methods of calculation involved the use of ‘trigonal numbers’ (Trigonalzahlen), a multipli-cation technique he borrowed from the works of the Ulm mathematician and prophet, Johann Faulhaber. On Faulhaberand the Trigonalzahlen, see I. Schneider, Johannes Faulhaber 1580–1635. Rechenmeister in einer Welt des Umbruchs(Berlin: Birkhäuser Verlag, 1993).117 P. Nagel, Wächterbuchlein vnd Letztes Stundgeschrey wie hoch es am Tage sey, vnd vmb welche Stunde des Nachts[…] Wird auch zu Ende M. Phillippo Arnoldi […] geantwortet (n.p., 1622), sig. G2v. There were, of course, spectacularprophetic misfires along the way. For example, in his Prognosticon Harmonicum, sigs B3v–B4r, Nagel predicted that anew star would appear in June or August of 1623, an event which, of course, never occurred.118 F. Breckling, ‘Catalogus testium veritatis post Lutherum continuatis huc usque’, [n.d., 1690s?] in Arnold, Kirchen-und Ketzer-Historie, vol. 4, 1096: ‘M. Paulus Nagelius ein Adeptus Astrologus, der viele wunderbahre schrifften zumverstand der mystischen Astrologie herauß gegeben, und darin von dem sel. Joh. Arnd hochgehalten ist.’



As Reinhard Breymayer has pointed out, the idea of a universal instrument appears to havestemmed from the heterodox literature of the late sixteenth century.119 In terms of identifyingNagel’s own sources, we can be rather more specific. His initial inspiration appears to have beenthe pseudo-Paracelsian Archidoxes magicae (c.1570), extracts from which Nagel copied into amanuscript compilation before 1610. In book five of this work, its author mentioned a speculumconstellatione, a simple but powerful tool of catoptromantic astronomical divination, preparedunder specific zodiacal influences, which the text also described as the königliches Instrument.120

It is likely that Nagel associated this speculum, or looking-glass, with yet other accounts. In 1621,the pseudo-Weigelian Zwey schöne Büchlein […] von dem leben Christi, which may have circu-lated in manuscript for some years prior, referred allegorically to a plumb line, right-angle anddivider, ‘by which all things might be measured, be they in the kingdom of God, or whether theystem from it’.121 Nagel’s vision might also have been informed by works of the late sixteenth-century Lutheran prophet Eustachius Poyssel, who regularly spoke of the Key of David(Schlüssel Davids), in his many tracts, which seemed to possess a similar function.122

Nagel’s conception of the universal instrument, however – informed by a close reading ofRevelation 11:1–2 – was more coherent than these forerunners. First, the königliches Instrumentwas no physical instrument or set of instruments at all, but rather, a golden measure (güldeneMeßstab). The scope of its powers, Nagel proclaimed, was ‘almost unbelievable’.123 It couldplumb and reveal the deepest secrets, not only of the heavens, but of all of nature (including thehomo interior), as well as the prophetic works of the Bible. Nagel stated that this omnipresentinstrument reached from the earth right up to the upper waters of creation,124 it exceeded thepowers of all human tools, and could not be bought with gold or silver.125 Connecting directly toNagel’s ruminations on the School of the Holy Spirit, Nagel declared that possession of theinstrument was a gift of God.126 He explicitly stated that only readers of Weigel’s Gnothi Seautonwould be able to grasp the essential nature of his allegory and be granted understanding of theinstrument, its use and application.127 The discovery of the golden measure was therefore theultimate confirmation of the rectitude of Nagel’s prophetic system. It was the proof of animminent release from the chaos and crises of the world.

Although Nagel’s view on the universal instrument derived from prior sources, he was notsimply prepared to take its existence for granted. Indeed, he wrestled with the concept for sometime. Although he had suspected the existence of an apocalyptic ‘golden measure’ as early as

119 See R. Breymayer, ‘Das Königliche Instrument. Eine religiös motivierte meßtechnische Utopie bei AndreasLuppius (1686), ihre Wurzeln beim Frührosenkreuzer Simon Studion (1596) und ihre Nachwirkung beim TheosophenFriedrich Christoph Oetinger (1776)’, in Das Andere Wahrnehmen. Beiträge zur europäischen Geschichte. AugustNitschke zum 65. Geburtstag gewidmet, edited by M. Kintzinger, W. Stürner and J. Zahlten (Vienna: Böhlau Verlag,1991), 509–32. At the time of writing, Breymayer was unaware that the author of the Königliche Instrument wasNagel, for he discovered the text in a late seventeenth-century collection of tracts attributed to Paracelsus.120 For the text, see Paracelsus, Sämmtliche Werke. Erste Abteilung, edited by K. Sudhoff, 14 vols (Munich and Berlin:Oldenbourg, 1922–9), vol. 14, 479–85; Nagel had copied this interesting section in one of his manuscripts, see Halle UBMS M 14b, 31ff.121 On this work, see the remarks in F.C. Oetinger, Biblisches und emblematisches Wörterbuch, edited by G. Schäfer, M.Schmidt and K. Aland, Texte zur Geschichte des Pietismus, 3/7 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1999), vol. 2, 327–8.122 See P. Nagel, Cursus Quinquenalis Mundi: Wundergeheime Offenbarung deß trawrigen vnnd betrübten zustandswelcher in nechstkünfftigen Jahren vermuhtlich sich begeben und zutragen soll (Halle, 1620), sig. E2v, where he citesthe works of ‘Eustachius Postel’ – I take this to be a conflation of the names of Guillaume Postel and Eustachius Poyssel,both of whose works Nagel knew thoroughly. On Poyssel, see Barnes, Prophecy and Gnosis, 167–8, 173–4, 197–8 and223–4.123 P. Nagel, Raptum Astronomicum, Das ist: Hinderlassene Entdeckung und Beschriebung eines rechten und uberKöniglichen Instruments (n.p., 1625), sig. B3r. Nagel attributed no less than forty-two separate powers to the instrument.124 Nagel, Raptum Astronomicum, sig. B1v.125 Nagel, Raptum Astronomicum, sig. B2v.126 Nagel, Raptum Astronomicum, sig. B2v.127 Nagel, Raptum Astronomicum, sig. B3r.


222 L.T.I. PENMAN

1619 – and perhaps even earlier – he was, despite his manifold calculations, unable to identifyit.128 Nagel’s search was, at first, methodical and bible-centric. Initially, he investigated theweighty scriptural numbers 666, 42, 33 and others; adding, multiplying and dividing them as hesaw fit, in accordance with some invisible logic. Yet although he struck out in various directionsin hope of finding a solution to the mystery, he remained without luck. Suddenly, however, inDecember and January of 1619 and 1620, Nagel discovered a most important clue, which causedhim to shift the emphasis of his search.

This clue was found not in the Bible, but in the natural world. More than that, it was in fact thenatural world itself. Just as Nagel had concluded that the heavens were ‘nothing other than a bookwritten by the glory of God’,129 Nagel determined that the basis of his reckonings must havesomething to do with the physical size of the planet easiest to measure – the Earth.130 The size ofthe Earth, and the proportions of the universe, were products of the wisdom of its great architect.As such, Nagel set out to measure the planet. Following some brief astrological calculations,Nagel reckoned that the earth’s circumference at the equator was equal to 5,614 German miles.This result – vastly inaccurate though it was – proved to be a revelation.131 For 5,614 happenedto coincide precisely with Nagel’s earlier chronological declaration that the world would endurefor exactly 5,614 years before the Last Judgement. This coincidence of geography, sacred history,chronology, biblical prophecy and astronomy was impossible for the prophet to overlook, andconfirmed 5,614 as the güldene Meßstab, the ‘secret wonder-number’ which he had so longsought.132

Nagel’s discovery was written up in a lengthy manuscript composed in 1620, under thedramatic title Raptus Astronomicus (Astronomy seized).133 It would not appear in print, however,until after the prophet’s death. The posthumous publication of the text was not due to Nagel’sown suppression of the work; it is far more likely due to the expenses associated with printingsuch a lengthy volume, particularly as it featured a series of unique woodcuts which would haveto have been commissioned at substantial cost. It should come as no surprise then, to learn thatthe text was first issued unillustrated, in a heavily abridged quarto pamphlet in 1625. In 1627, thecomplete text, together with woodcuts, was printed in two quarto volumes.134 Within its pages,the significance of the number 5,614 as the hidden ‘key’ to the universe was demonstrated bynumerous kabbalistic, gematric, magical and mathematical arguments. For example, with refer-ence to Daniel 12:7 and the prophet’s division of the ages into ‘a time, times and half a time’(reflecting the Joachimite three ages of the earth), Nagel began with the year 1604 (the date ofthe new star and great conjunction) as the ‘time’, added 3,208 (twice 1604, the ‘times’) andfinally 802 (half a time) in order to again confirm the 5,614 years which creation would

128 Nagel Prodromus astronomiæ apocalypticæ, sigs B1v–B2r: ‘Und ich wil hier nichts schreiben von einem wunder-bahrn Universalinstrument und gantz güldenen MeßStabe.’ Yet even at this early point, the prophet realised he wouldonly be able to achieve the mature goals of his prophetic program ‘wann ich unser Königliches Universal instrument undrecht güldenen Meßstab entdecken [kann]’ (sig. F1v).129 Nagel Prodromus astronomiæ apocalypticæ, sig. C3v.130 Nagel Prodromus astronomiæ apocalypticæ, sig. F1v.131 One German mile was equivalent to approximately 6.4 km. Nagel therefore calculated the earth’s circumference to bearound 35,929.6 km, well short of the actual distance of c. 40,075 km.132 Nagel tested the number 5,614 extensively in his Philosophia novae astronomiae, sig. K2v etc., where he linked thenumber to the cycle of great conjunctions of Jupiter and Saturn, the correct size of the seven known planets, the propheciesof 2 Esdras, Daniel, Revelation and other biblical books.133 Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. 15392 Nr. 1, fols 1r–151r. ‘Raptus Astronomicus das ist Weissagungaus dem 1. 2. und 3. Himmel aufs 1620 und 1621. Jahr.’134 Nagel, Raptum Astronomicum (1625); P. Nagel, Raptus Astronomicus Das ist Astronomische gewisse warhafftigeProphecey und Weissagung/ aus dem Ersten/ Andern und Dritten Himmel/ wie solche darinn befunden worden, Von M.Paulo Nagelio Sel: im Jahr 1620 beschrieben/ dergleichen zuvor nie gesehen noch gehöret. Jetzo aber menniglichen zumDruck gebracht. 2 vols (n.p., 1627). The claim on the title page that the manuscript had never before seen print is naturallyfalse – presumably, it was set in print by a rival group to those who had published the 1625 edition.



supposedly endure.135 This is only a hint of the sorts of interdependent calculation Nagelproduced to document the efficacy of the instrument. Using the figure of Jacob’s ladder,Nagel attempted to represent other correspondences between the heavenly bodies, the zodiac, thetwelve Apostles, twelve tribes of Israel, the Church Fathers and others in an allegorical represen-tation of reaching the different spheres of creation by passing through rituals of personal pietyand purification, penetrating the upper waters of creation and ultimately establishing contact withangelic wisdom.136

In another diagram, the ‘cœlum oraculare’ (Figure 2), Nagel confirmed the unity of all Biblicalprophecies by positing a bizarre series of gematric correspondences between the chapter and

135 Nagel, Raptus Astronomicus, vol. 1, sig. D4r.136 See J. Reuchlin, De arte cabalistica (Hagenau, 1517), sig. xxiv.

Figure 2. The ‘Cœlum Oraculare’ from Nagel, Raptus Astronomicus, II (1627), S1v. Courtesy of Hans-JörgThaler.


224 L.T.I. PENMAN

verse numbers of specific biblical prophecies.137 These were represented on a prophetic rota, orwheel. In order to illustrate the logic of his considerable ingenuity to readers, Nagel explainedone of the hundreds of correspondences; Nagel began with the fact that there are collectively 123chapters in the works of the major Old Testament prophets Daniel, Isaiah, Ezechiel and Jeremiah.When the apocalyptic number 666 was divided by 123, the result was, according to Nagel, 5.51[sic, the solution is actually 5.41]. In the fifth and fifty-first chapters of Isaiah, Nagel thereforeasserted, one could find prophecies which would shortly come to pass, which then pointed to theforthcoming third and golden age.138 In this fashion, he stated, the seeker of the universal instru-ment could work through all significant prophetic numbers and derive solace and inspiration fromthe prophecies to which the appropriate mathematical solutions pointed.Figure 2. The ‘Cœlum Oraculare’ from Nagel, Raptus Astronomicus, II (1627), S1v. Courtesy of Hans-Jörg Thaler.For Nagel, such diverse and interdependent ‘kabbalistic proofs’ fed his Hermetic convictionsand, importantly, demonstrated beyond all reasonable doubt, both to himself and – presumably –his readers, the existence of an underlying magical system of the world. This system rendered thecourse of time, and therefore the assurance of salvation, as predictable as ‘clockwork’.139 Thisclockwork universe also confirmed the rectitude of Nagel’s theosophical and pneumatologicalideas concerning the Holy Spirit, and therefore his dissent from mainstream Lutheranism. Onecould only find the golden measure, apply the Universal Instrument, escape the mortal world,and enter the millennial kingdom when one had been truly inspired by the Holy Spirit andallowed Christ into one’s heart. Nagel’s was a self-legitimating, infallible, holy system, a far cryfrom the hypocrisy, the ‘disputes and squabbling [Schwätzerey]’ conducted by representatives ofthe worldly ‘churches of mere walls [Mauerkirchen]’, all of whom insisted on persecuting Nageland his readers.140 In short, Nagel offered his readers hope for the future, and a delivery fromchaos.

Although Nagel’s sense of his own prophetic significance was great, and he often emphasizedthe unique nature and originality of his chiliastic magical vision in his tracts, he was keen to stressthat anyone had the ability to partake in the coming millennial kingdom. Even if readers wereunable to follow his numerous and diverse proofs of the signs of the times, or wished to ignorethem outright, Nagel still left directions for them to discover the key to the universal instrument,and thus enter the Kingdom of God:

Wait for a joyous night when the heavens are beautiful and clear and without cloud or wind. Climb tothe peak of a very high mountain and look to the east. Observe the sky with care until you see a beau-tiful star in forma ignis ascend. When it has appeared, wend your eyes in the direction of the middaysun, where the mighty star Heliodes shines. Look next to where the sun sets in the evening, there willstand the great star Erothea. Finally, turn and face the direction of midnight. There you will discoverthe splendid star Apechides. Immediately after you have observed these four stars – and I speak hereno falsehoods – you will begin to feel their power and their impression start to work their influencedeep within yourself. The bolts and seals of your understanding will spring open, and there you willfind the key of which I have spoken.141

137 Nagel does not address the fact that verses only began to be numbered in German Bibles during the late sixteenthcentury.138 Nagel, Raptus Astronomicus, vol. 2, sig. S2r.139 Nagel, Prodromus astronomiæ apocalypticæ, sig. D2r.140 Nagel, Prognosticon Auffs Jahr 1625, sig. A4v.141 Nagel, Tabula Aurea, sig. A4v. The allegory of the ascent of the mountain was popular in alchemical literature of theperiod. Nagel’s major source for this idea, however, was probably E.D.F.O.C.R. Sen., Gründtlicher Bericht, von demvorhaben, Gelegenheit und Innhalt der löblichen Bruderschafft deß Rosen Creutzes, Gestellt durch einen unbenannten,aber doch Führnehmen derselbigen Brüderschafft Mitgenossen (Frankfurt, 1617), a Rosicrucian reply that contains verysimilar language and sentiment.



SUPPLICATION AND TRANSCENDENCE

As can be gathered from the preceding discussion, Nagel’s vision of a spiritual millennium andthe presentation of his elaborate proofs of the coming Golden Age was by no means elitist. Whilesome of his prophetic contemporaries had been seduced by their own supposed status as prophetsfavoured by God and abandoned themselves to a ‘criminal arrogance’ – as in the case of theBohemian emigré Paul Felgenhauer – or indeed proclaimed that they were, in fact the Messiah –as did Esajas Stiefel and Ezechiel Meth – Nagel shunned the attention that came with hisrevelations. He actively turned away ‘disciples’ who visited him in Torgau, and promoted in itsplace his systematic prophetic system.142 Nagel’s promulgation of his chiliastic vision waszealous. Between 1617, when he first expressed his chiliastic hopes for the future, and 1624,when he died, Nagel printed more than thirty books and pamphlets on the subject of theforthcoming paradise.

While these works often contained polemic against his many enemies, they were apparentlyintended as an evangelical herald to a new kind of Lutheran piety or Frömmigkeit, which claimedauthority not from the moribund churches and pointless doctrinal disputes of this world, but theangelic intelligences of the next. As far as Nagel was concerned, a sort of enlightened transcen-dence was the only appropriate reaction to the chaos and corruption of this world. Whoeverrefused to accept the ‘philosophical gold’ of the Holy Spirit would remain doomed to corruption.As Nagel eloquently stated in his Raptus Astronomicus:

Now whomsoever wishes to enter the angelic world, to see the angels rise and descend, indeed wishesto do so himself, he must leave behind everything worldly, temporal and corruptible; all proud, fleshlylife and being, carnal desire and sin. He steps upon the ladder, does not look back, and climbs alongwith the angels. For whatever remains below (was unten bleibt) will be corrupted.143

The necessity of transcending the mortal world was emphasized in many of Nagel’s later works,perhaps in conjunction with his increasing physical ailments. One of the more notable expres-sions of this desire for transcendence was expressed in the Prognosticon auffs Jahr 1625, writtentoward the conclusion of 1624, and perhaps merely days before his own death. In this final work,the prophet wrote to his audience of the necessity of possessing the ‘divine gold [aurum divi-num]’, which, in a sense similar to alchemical transmutation, could redeem and purify the indi-vidual in a new birth, allowing him to make contact with the Godly intelligences. According toNagel, there could be no other way forward, for those who do not strive for this gold ‘wish toremain resigned in Sin and in the old birth […] they shall have no part in this [forthcoming new]age, and therefore they will be judged alongside the beasts’.144

CONCLUSIONS

Although Nagel spoke out against individual theologians who opposed his work, and against thestale doctrinal disputes that dominated the Lutheran faith, he never outright rejected the confes-sion in which he was raised. Like Valentin Weigel before him, Nagel’s chiliastic vision of a futurespiritual harmony was not intended to function in opposition to the general teachings of the faithwith which he identified, but rather to reform, nuance and improve them. Nagel’s doctrines wereconsidered heretical by many of his orthodox Lutheran counterparts. However, Nagel himself

142 Leipzig, UB MS 0 356, fol. 31v (Nagel to Kerner, 30 July 1621).143 Nagel, Raptus Astronomicus, sig. L2v.144 Nagel, Prognosticon Auffs Jahr 1625, sig. B3r.


226 L.T.I. PENMAN

never stated that he was anything other than a Lutheran. Although his vision of future harmonyultimately took on a chiliastic form and was decidedly influenced by spiritualist doctrines, theroots of Nagel’s apocalyptic faith initially thrived in evangelical soil.

Nagel’s path from orthodox Lutheran to critic of the faith was not sudden. It was the productof a cumulative series of revelations, incidents, influences and pressures, both personal andpublic. The basic intellectual convictions which underwrote the expression of Nagel’s ultimatechiliastic spirituality were encountered relatively early in his intellectual development. Shortlyafter his departure from Wittenberg in 1605, Nagel manifested an interest in prophetic and magi-cal literature, collecting extracts from the likes of Paracelsus, Agrippa and others. In 1612, hisnascent heterodox proclivities were buttressed when he spent some time at the castle library ofAugust von Anhalt-Plötzkau. There, he became familiar with assorted Rosicrucian, prophetic andWeigelian works. He quickly advertised his interest and intellectual investment in this materialboth in his manuscript extracts, as well as in his own printed work, as the portrait of 1613, withits Weigelian formulae, demonstrates.

In the background, developments within the Lutheran faith also seem to have played a crucialrole in fostering Nagel’s interest in ideas of a forthcoming felicitous future. First, there was theFrömmigkeitskrise, which gripped Lutheranism in the first two decades of the seventeenthcentury. The impact of this crisis on Nagel was twofold. First, as a sympathetic reader of Weigel,Philip Nicolai and Johann Arndt, Nagel may have been disillusioned by the reaction of hardlineLutheran theologians to the popularity of the new devotional literature, prompting him to distancehimself from the ‘dry’ orthodoxy of institutionalized Lutheranism. Second, however, as aLutheran intellectual inclined to the new devotional approach to spirituality, Nagel may alsohave found himself considered with suspicion by strict orthodox opponents of the devotionalmovement. Thus, set against the confession, Nagel sought out yet further works of potentiallyheterodox character.

This was not of itself a problem, as long as Nagel did not openly attach himself to ‘heterodox’or controversial ideas. Indeed, in the period leading up to 1617, Nagel did not publish any worksthat expressed his evidently increasing fervour for Weigelian and chiliastic notions. In Torgau,however, suspicions and rumours spread concerning his activities. These were revealed with thearrival of the Saxon church inspectors in 1617, after which time Nagel became a person of interestto Saxon authorities.

Whether or not his ‘discovery’ was a direct trigger for Nagel finally to publicize the ideas hemay or may not have been harbouring is difficult to determine. Upheavals in the local church mayhave encouraged him to speak out, so too his conviction that he had been chosen by the HolySpirit as a prophet, or third Elias. His decision is likely to have been further influenced by a crisisof conscience engendered by the Saxon stance of ‘political Papism’, adopted in the early phaseof the Bohemian rebellion. Nagel may have felt that a corrective to the orthodox position wastherefore necessary.

In any event, it was not until the Thirty Years’ War proper commenced in 1618 that Nagelchose to outline the full details of his chiliastic expectations in a series of publications, endingonly with his death at the end of 1624. These tracts emphasized the connections between themysteries of heaven and earth, of scripture and nature, signs all pointing to an imminent releasefrom this world in a future period of felicity. By its very nature – positing a divine order inincreasing chaos of personal illness, war, poverty and crippling inflation – this reaction to exteriorevents seems to have been intended to function as a desperate vision of supplication, a strangeand lingering by-product of the Frömmigkeitskrise. Such a feeling of comfort was not justintended for Nagel himself, but also for the broader community, Nagelisten and otherwise.

History Faculty, University of Oxford


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Leigh Penman: Climbing Jacob's Ladder. Crisis, Chiliasm and Transcendence in the Thought of Paul...

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